Sources and Inspirations

We follow a wide and varied assortment of sources for current events related to computational infrastructures. Here, we provide a non-exhaustive list that serve as inspiration. While most of these are critical in nature, we do not necessarily endorse all their views.

Newspapers and Magazines

Business

• Financial Times: both the US, and the NL edition
• New York Times
• CNBC's Technology section
• Forbes' Enterprise Tech section/

Political

• The Intercept: "investigate powerful individuals and institutions to expose corruption and injustice"
• Netzpolitik: "a medium for digital freedoms" (in German)

General

• Wired: "leads the conversation on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from business and politics to culture and science."
• 404media: "exploring the ways technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world"
• The Verge"about technology and how it makes us feel [...] from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations"
• tech crunch: startups, venture capital, new products
• Logic(s) the first queer Black and Asian tech magazine. Logic(s) goes beyond mere critique to serve as a beacon of new possibilities

Newsletters and Blogs

The below newsletters usually 1) compile (references to) articles, analyses, current events, and announcements related to the topic or network of the newsletter and their author; 2) long-form analyses of current events; or both. Some of the listed newsletters also publish other content than their newsletters.

International

• Nerdreich: for US government and Silicon Valley; "about the tech authoritarian politics of Silicon Valley plutocrats"
• Internet Exchange: newsletter by Mallory Knodel "dedicated to exploring Internet governance, digital rights, and the intersection of technology and society"
• EDRI-gram: newsletter that "collects and summarises the most important digital rights news"; run by European Digital Rights (EDRi), "the biggest European network defending rights and freedoms online"
• Where's Your Ed At: critical long-form write-ups on technical and business developments in AI, mostly on AI; by Ed Zitron
• The Pragmatic Engineer: "Big tech and startups, from the inside. Relevant for software engineers and managers, interesting for those working at tech", by Gergely Orosz
• Tech Policy Press : critical opinion pieces on technology meeting power, ethics, economy, (geo)politics, racism, election integrity, and more
• EU AI Industrial Policy Monitor: "newsletter on industrial policy and AI in Europe, i.e. public investment, regulatory, spending, and procurement strategies designed to promote the EU’s AI economy" by the AI Now Institute
• The Corner Newsletter: on using competition policy for democracy, justice, equitable, innovation; by the Open Markets Institute
• SOMO's newsletter and specifically their work on Challenging Big Tech: Dutch knowledge and research organisation that "hold corporate power to account"
• The Syllabus: curation of current high-quality articles and reports. Founded by Evgeny Morozov. Free and paid version.
• Benedict Evans' newsletter: tries "to work out what’s really happening, what matters, and what it might mean" in the sea of tech hypoe. Usually from a US perspective. Free and paid version.

From the Netherlands

• DINL Factsheet: reports on Dutch political developments concerning ICT; mostly without opinion
• de Waag a trans-disciplinary team of designers, artists and scientists, utilising public research methods in the realms of technology and society
• public spaces Onder de paraplu van PublicSpaces werken deze organisaties samen aan een oplossing voor een gemeenschappelijk probleem: de afhankelijkheid van big tech.
• Bert Hubert: leading Dutch tech expert following cloud, telecom, and Dutch politics (with occasional posts in English); featuring a newsletter in Dutch and English
• Jaap-Henk Hoepman: internationally published researcher working on, among other things, privacy and big tech.
• Bits of Freedom digital rights organization based in Amsterdam

Podcasts and Video Channels

Political and Economic Analysis

• Tech Won’t Save Us: "A healthy counter dose to the nauseating tech utopia idealism that usually surrounds Silicon Valley and enthusiast tech press coverage"; by Paris Marx and Eric Wickham
• New York Times' The Daily: (almost-)daily podcast; transcriptions available
• Screaming in the cloud Screaming in the Cloud: "conversations with domain experts in the world of Cloud Computing"; by Corey Quinn
• FT News Briefing: "a rundown of the most important global business stories" every weekday morning; transcripts available
• Big Technology Podcast: "takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators"; by Alex Kantrowitz, a Silicon Valley journalist

Tech Talk & Product News

• MKBHD: on new tech products and services, for a broad audience; by Marques Brownlee
• Gamers Nexus: computing hardware reviews
• The Economics Of: "unpacks innovative businesses, brands and products that have revolutionized modern life"; by the Wall Street Journal
• Tech Behind: "explores the amazing engineering, computing, science and algorithms that power our favorite tech"; by the Wall Street Journal

Other resources

• Company earnings calls and annual reports
• Industry magazines and conferences
• Interviews with experts
• Building, running and maintaining our own infrastructure

Dealing with paywalls and changing websites

Note that not all websites will remain eternally available. Archiving websites, such as archive.is, can be helpful to get a more persistent copy. Prepending archive.is/ to any URL will yield an archived version or let you create one on the spot. These archived versions will bypass most paywalls. For instance, archive.is/https://www.ft.com/content/c148d46f-8c6f-487e-b8d7-8e7b9eddc324 provides the persistent webpage capture https://archive.is/ZLYm9.

This may require you to clean up the URL first (e.g. in https://www.example.com/page?utm_content=buffer12345&utm_medium=social&utm_source=coolwebsite.com&utm_campaign=buffer, remove everything after the question mark).