The 59 Best Technology Journalism Stories Published in 2019

Here’s my compendium of the best tech reporting, writing, and commentary of 2019: January Josh Constine, Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ Joseph Cox, I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone Motherboard (Vice) https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile Martin Giles, Explainer: What is a quantum computer? MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612844/what-is-quantum-computing/ February Casey Newton, Illustrations: Corey Brickley, Photos: Jessica Chou The Trauma Floor: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona Catalin Cimpanu, Russia to disconnect from the internet as part of a planned test ZDNet https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-to-disconnect-from-the-internet-as-part-of-a-planned-test/ Taylor Lorenz, When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-kids-realize-their-whole-life-already-online/582916/ Jonathan Corum, NASA’s Opportunity Rover Dies on Mars The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/13/science/opportunity-rover-mars-map.html March Cory Doctorow, Myspace lost all the music its users uploaded between 2003 and 2015 Boing Boing https://boingboing.net/2019/03/17/facebook-is-next.html Greg Epstein, Silicon Valley’s inequality machine TechCrunch (ExtraCrunch) https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/02/silicon-valleys-inequality-machine-anand-giridharadas/ Joe Veix, Photos, Brandon Tauszik I Rode an E-Scooter as Far From Civilization as Its Batteries Could Take Me Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com/i-rode-an-e-scooter-as-far-from-civilization-as-its-bat-1833434599 Micah Maidenberg, Who Controls Diners’ Data? OpenTable Moves to Assert Control The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-controls-diners-data-opentable-moves-to-assert-control-11552644121 Mike Isaac, As Mark Zuckerberg Tightens Grip on Facebook, 2 Top Deputies Leave The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-chris-cox.html April Alfred Ng, Facebook still tracks you after you deactivate account CNET https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-is-still-tracking-you-after-you-deactivate-your-account/ Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, 15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook Wired https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-15-months-of-fresh-hell/ Darren Byler, China’s hi-tech war on its Muslim minority The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/11/china-hi-tech-war-on-muslim-minority-xinjiang-uighurs-surveillance-face-recognition Daniel Oberhaus, A Programmer Solved a 20-Year-Old, Forgotten Crypto Puzzle Wired https://www.wired.com/story/a-programmer-solved-a-20-year-old-forgotten-crypto-puzzle/ May Paul Ford, Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry Wired https://www.wired.com/story/why-we-love-tech-defense-difficult-industry/ Nathan Heller, The Hidden Radicalism of Chris Hughes’s Call to Break Up Facebook The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-hidden-radicalism-of-chris-hughess-call-to-break-up-facebook John Kennedy, A year after GDPR, how is Ireland tackling the data giants? Siliconrepublic https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/gdpr-ireland-dpc-investigations June Casey Newton Illustrations: Corey Brickley, Photos: Amelia Holowaty Krales Bodies in Seats: At Facebook’s worst-performing content moderation site in North America, one contractor has died, and others say they fear for their lives The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderator-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa Nitasha Tiku, Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech Wired https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ Alfred Ng, Amazon’s helping police build a surveillance network with Ring doorbells CNET https://www.cnet.com/features/amazons-helping-police-build-a-surveillance-network-with-ring-doorbells/ Julia Alexander, YouTube looks to demonetization as punishment for major creators, but it doesn’t work The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18744246/youtube-demonetization-steven-crowder-patreon-advertising-merch Jack Gillum and Jeff Kao, and Photos: Adrienne Grunwald Aggression Detectors: The Unproven, Invasive Surveillance Technology Schools Are Using to Monitor Students ProPublica Wired https://features.propublica.org/aggression-detector/the-unproven-invasive-surveillance-technology-schools-are-using-to-monitor-students/ July Brian Krebs, Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People KrebsonSecurity https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/07/capital-one-data-theft-impacts-106m-people/ Farhad Manjoo, The Tech Industry Is Building a Vast Digital Underclass The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/opinion/doordash-tipping.html Andy Newman, Photos: Christopher Lee My Frantic Life as a Cab-Dodging, Tip-Chasing Food App Deliveryman The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/nyregion/doordash-ubereats-food-app-delivery-bike.html Patrick Howell O’Neill, What happens when a country’s entire adult population is hacked? MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/f/613973/what-happens-when-a-countrys-entire-adult-population-is-hacked/ Charlotte Jee, How “stalkerware” apps are letting abusive partners spy on their victims MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613915/stalkerware-apps-are-letting-abusive-partners-spy-on-their-victims/ Dan Goodin, My browser, the spy: How extensions slurped up browsing histories from 4M users Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/07/dataspii-inside-the-debacle-that-dished-private-data-from-apple-tesla-blue-origin-and-4m-people/ Sue Halpern, How Cyberweapons Are Changing the Landscape of Modern Warfare The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-cyber-weapons-are-changing-the-landscape-of-modern-warfare Jennifer Walter, The Mechanical Turk: How a Chess-playing Hoax Inspired Real Computers Discover Magazine https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/the-mechanical-turk-how-a-chess-playing-hoax-inspired-real-computers August Elizabeth Lopatto, WeWork Isn’t a Tech Company, It’s a Soap Opera The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/15/20806366/we-company-wework-ipo-adam-neumann Greg Williams, Inside DeepMind’s epic mission to solve science’s trickiest problem Wired UK https://www.wired.co.uk/article/deepmind-protein-folding Wes Schlagenhauf, Yelp swaps restaurant phone numbers with Grubhub’s to boost referral revenue The Hustle https://thehustle.co/yelp-grubhub-restaurant-controversy/ Nick Heath, Python is eating the world: How one developer’s side project became the hottest programming language on the planet TechRepublic https://www.techrepublic.com/article/python-is-eating-the-world-how-one-developers-side-project-became-the-hottest-programming-language-on-the-planet/ September Madhumita Murgla and Richard Waters, Google claims to have reached quantum supremacy Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/b9bb4e54-dbc1-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17 Kim Zetter and Huib Modderkolk, Revealed: How a secret Dutch mole aided the U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran Yahoo News https://news.yahoo.com/revealed-how-a-secret-dutch-mole-aided-the-us-israeli-stuxnet-cyber-attack-on-iran-160026018.html Kara Swisher, He Who Must Not Be Tolerated The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/opinion/joichi-ito.html Andrew Marantz, The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/the-dark-side-of-techno-utopianism Anna Wiener, Four Years in Startups The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/four-years-in-startups October Casey Newton, All Hands On Deck The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20756701/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-leak-audio-ftc-antitrust-elizabeth-warren-tiktok-comments Kara Swisher, The Sum of Zuckerberg’s Fears The New York Times Paris Martineau, Turkish ISP Blocks Social Media Sites Near Syrian Border Wired https://www.wired.com/story/turkish-isp-blocks-social-media-syrian-border/ Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier makes the case for “public interest technologists” Boing Boing https://boingboing.net/2019/10/10/public-interest-at-scale.html Katherine Miller, The 2010s Broke Our Sense Of Time Buzzfeed News https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katherinemiller/the-2010s-have-broken-our-sense-of-time November Lily Hay Newman, How the Iranian Government Shut Off the Internet Wired https://www.wired.com/story/iran-internet-shutoff/ Rob Copeland, Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightingale-gathers-personal-health-data-on-millions-of-americans-11573496790 Ashlee Vance, Images: Guy Martin Open Source Code Will Survive the Apocalypse in an Arctic Cave Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-11-13/microsoft-apocalypse-proofs-open-source-code-in-an-arctic-cave Ben Thompson, The Google Squeeze Stratechery https://stratechery.com/2019/the-google-squeeze/ Susan D’Agostino, Photos: Cody O’Loughlin The Architect of Modern Algorithms Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org/barbara-liskov-is-the-architect-of-modern-algorithms-20191120/ Greg Epstein, Will the future of work be ethical? TechCrunch (ExtraCrunch) https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/28/will-the-future-of-work-be-ethical/ December Adi Robertson, Illustrations by Alex Castro / How to fight lies, tricks, and chaos online The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20980741/fake-news-facebook-twitter-misinformation-lies-fact-check-how-to-internet-guide Dan Goodin, New crypto-cracking record reached, with less help than usual from Moore’s Law Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/12/new-crypto-cracking-record-reached-with-less-help-than-usual-from-moores-law/ Josh Constine, Instagram still doesn’t age-check kids. That must change. TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/03/instagram-age-limit/ Casey Newton, Larry Page is the tech world’s Dr. Manhattan The Verge https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/12/4/20993633/larry-page-sergey-brin-quit-google-dr-manhattan-watchmen-strained-metaphor Zoe Schiffer, Illustrations by Grayson Blackmon and Will Joel Emotional Baggage The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion Caroline Haskins, Image: Hunter French How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs Motherboard (Vice) https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywaa57/how-ring-transmits-fear-to-american-suburbs Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel, Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html