John Biggs
John Biggs is a writer, consultant, programmer, former East Coast Editor and current contributing writer for TechCrunch. He writes mainly about technology, security, gadgets, gear, wristwatches, and the internet. After spending four years as an IT programmer, he switched his profession and became a full-time journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Laptop, PC Upgrade, Surge, Gizmodo, Men’s Health, InSync, Linux Journal, Popular Science, Sync, and he has written a book called Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age.
He builds products, writes books, and consults with startups to help them make cool things.
John Biggs runs the BWL family of blogs, SlushPile.net, Audiomonger, and WristWatchReview.com. He also runs the HourTime Podcast with Ariel Adams at hourtimeshow.com. Born in 1975, he currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
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Latest from John Biggs
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A digitizing David takes on photo-scanning Goliath
Mitch Goldstone loves photo scanning. His business, ScanMyPhotos, does what it says on the tin: you send photos to the company and, using high speed scanners and special software, his team digitizes your photos, sticks them onto a USB key or online, and sends them back. He is proud of his business. Thanks to his scanners he’s helped users save their photos from tornadoes, floods, and theft. Read More
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Historian Leslie Berlin talks about the rise of Silicon Valley
In this week’s episode of Technotopia I spoke to author and historian Leslie Berlin, writer of Troublemakers: Silicon Valleys’ Coming Of Age. Berlin is the Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University and one of the few people who can see the entire rise of SV tech culture from a researcher’s perspective. Berlin’s book is quirky, fun… Read More
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Quiet
he trip began just before the end of school. From the wood-shaving smell of third grade out into the clean winter air, sprung free by my mother who appeared at the little window in the classroom door like a treat. You were the one who got out early. You were the one walking down an empty hall toward the big triple doors of the school. We were leaving school to drive to my… Read More
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The Kronos Lift standing desk brings a little class to getting off your chair
I’ve been following the rise of standing desks for a few years now and still use one on a daily basis. The technology hasn’t changed much in the decade or so that they’ve become truly popular but the design and quality is always improving which is why I took a look at the Kronos Lift from BDI. This is a surprisingly elegant desk with very little visible machinery –… Read More
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Cryptocurrencies have an everything problem
A mom from Arkansas, a major donor to Republican causes with very little experience in technology, wants to invest $50,000 in bitcoin. A man from Switzerland curses during a Skype call because his Korean over-the-counter exchange went down during a massive trade. An entrepreneur placed a Trezor bitcoin wallet worth $150,000 on his car key chain. Another futurist is Tweeting late at night about… Read More
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See you tonight at the Brooklyn micro meetup
I’ve been holding a few micro meetups over the past few years and thought I’d start it up again in honor of token/ICO mania. I’d love to hear what you all are working on in the New York area so we’ll all meet at Union Hall in Brooklyn tonight at 7pm. The event is very informal and we’ll plan the next few months of micro-meetups during the event. My goal is to do a… Read More
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Overstock’s CEO launches new trading platform and token, tZero
Few mainstream business leaders have taken to the blockchain quite like Patrick Byrne. The founder of Overstock.com has been accepting Bitcoin since 2014 and has been talking about disrupting the payments world with transparent, low-cost, and sane blockchain-based systems. With tZero, he just started his roll toward full blockchain adoption. TZero, at its core, is a SEC-regulated… Read More
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Writer Tobias Stone talks about the history of the future
Tobias Stone blew up Medium in 2016 with his post about Trump and Brexit. The trained historian, philosopher, and (full disclosure) husband of TechCrunch’s amazing Leslie Hitchcock, took the lessons of the past and extrapolated what we can expect to see in the next few years as our political chickens come home to roost. In this Technotopia podcast Stone shares his thoughts on the… Read More
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A hard look at token sale mania by a true insider
Moshe Hogeg is a fixture in the Valley mythos. This Israeli founder of Yo (yes, that Yo) and Mobli, he recently became one of the most prolific ICO investors in the world with a thesis that, in short, that states he will put small amounts of money into every sane token sale. Hogeg (whose company advertises on a weekly ICO newsletter that I started but do not write) recently posted some… Read More
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More dead commenters appear to come out against net neutrality
Two more dead commenters have been spotted commenting on the FCC’s foregone net neutrality vote, a small but not insignificant discovery considering that, while public outcry for net neutrality was high, FCC representatives dismissed most of supportive net neutrality commentary as spam. While searching a database created by the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a… Read More
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Let’s meet in New York to talk token sales
I’ve been holding a few micro meet ups over the past few years and thought I’d start it up again in honor of token/ICO mania. I’d love to hear what you all are working on in the New York area so we’ll all meet at Union Hall in Brooklyn next Wednesday at 7pm. The event is very informal and we’ll plan the next few months of micro-meetups during the event. My goal is… Read More
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CamSoda rolls our WebRTC for truly portable cam activities
They say the adult industry usually leads the way with new technology and CamSoda [NSFW LINK], a NSFW cam site, is no exception. The site, which connects models in various states of undress with viewers in similar states of undress, is now supporting WebRTC transmission thereby allowing cammers and viewers alike to stream via mobile phone. The mission is simple: CamSoda wants to let… Read More
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A week on the wrist with the Alpina Startimer
It’s refreshing to wear a mechanical watch. The soft sweep of the seconds hand reminds us of the fleeting nature of time while the endless ticking in a dark room is a comfort and a spur to action. Add in a little limited edition provenance with big face and crown and you’ve got a stew going. This particular stew is called the Alpina Startimer. It is a pilot’s watch, a watch… Read More
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PuTTY Begone! Microsoft will ship an OpenSSH client
The first thing I download on a new Windows machine – after Chrome, of course – is PuTTY. This tried-and-true OpenSSH client has served millions of devs quite well for the past twenty years and I’m sure it will still remain a favorite but Microsoft has added its own ssh client to Windows, a move that points to more openness on the part of Redmond. The folks at ServeTheHome… Read More
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Indiegogo now lets you fund via token sale
Crowdfunding service and Kickstarter-competitor Indiegogo is now offering an ICO service alongside its partner, MicroVentures. The company will allow users to participate in SEC-complaint ICOs and, like its slow-burning equity crowdfunding service, will pick and choose startups that match certain exacting criteria. These tokens sales will be SEC complaint and the sales are performed within… Read More
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Clap on! Clap off! It’s Clapboss!
Sure Alexa can sing you a song but can you clap back at her? A new product by the makers of the Freewrite lets you do just that. Called Clapboss, this smiling dongle lets you clap up to four times to activate various things around your house. Clap twice to turn off your lights! Three times to turn off the TV! Four times to be reminded that you are now a slave to emotionless… Read More
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SEC shuts down Munchee ICO
In what should be an interesting beginning to the coming avalanche of ICO failures, the SEC has come down hard on Munchee, a company that built a $15 million token sale. The SEC chairman recently noted that coin offerings are, in fact, securities and that pre-sale participants must be registered with the SEC. The Munchee ICO aimed to fund the MUN coin, a payment system for restaurant reviews. Read More
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MakeX announces the first 3D-printing backpack
In the year 2020, when the Earth is overrun by aliens, it will be mandated by the Galactic Council of Extraterrestrial Life that all children must walk around with 3D-printing backpacks. Why not get a head start with the MakeX Migo backpack that lets you carry your ultra-small 3D printer anywhere you need to go? This wild, see-through backpack is designed to hold a Migo 3D Printer (the thing… Read More
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Some HP laptops are hiding a deactivated keylogger
Researcher Michael Myng found a deactivated keylogger in a piece of software found on over 460 HP laptop models. A full list of affected laptops is here. The keylogger is deactivated by default but could represent a privacy concern if an attacker has physical access to the computer. “Some time ago someone asked me if I can figure out how to control HP’s laptop keyboard… Read More
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Researchers train robots to see into the future
Robots usually react in real time: something happens, they respond. Now researchers University of California, Berkeley are working on a system that lets robots “imagine the future of their actions” so that they can interact with things they’ve never seen before. The technology is called visual foresight and it allows “robots to predict what their cameras will see if… Read More
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