Charlotte Henry

While we may be cynical about much of what Google does, it is easy to imagine it being a fairly pleasant place to work. According to report on Business Insider, away from bright colours and free food, there is another, less pleasant, side to things. The sex and politics apparently resembles the goings of a popular HBO television show.

Google is a hotbed of sex and political infighting. And it always has been. A source who spent most of his career at Google put it this way: “Inside Google, it’s a Game of Thrones.” Game of Thrones is a series of novels and an HBO television show. The plot is wildly intricate, but the main story is about how several families from all over the Kingdom are competing to take over the throne. The show and books are full of violence, sex, and political intrigue. There is no violence at Google. But sex and politics? Oh, yes.

Strava is a hugely popular activity monitoring app. Under the leadership of CEO James Quarles, it has grown significantly. He told Wired, he now wants to expand the app’s social network-like functionality.

The third, and possibly most important change, is deeply rooted in Quarles’ background with Facebook and Instagram. He has invested heavily in the social media elements of Strava. “We really made Strava about the photos and the social feed and the routes that people discover,” he says. “I think that’s had a huge role in increasing not just people coming to the app when they upload, but also when they want to download, meaning to look at what their friends are doing, to find great places and be inspired.” Quarles emphasises his drive to cultivate Strava’s athletic community. “I think that people have a more intense connection with their Strava usage on the community than they do with the brand that’s on their T-shirt or trainers,” he says. Strava users are always encouraging each other, providing, he adds, “that extra boost to come back and keep doing it.”

Instagram is testing a new messaging app as it looks to challenge Snapchat. The Verge got hold of some screenshots. It reported that the new product from the Facebook-owned picture-sharing service is called Threads.

Screenshots reviewed by The Verge show an app that’s designed to promote constant, automatic sharing between users and the people on their “close friends” list on Instagram. Opt in to automatic sharing, and Threads will regularly update your status, giving your friends a real-time view of information about your location, speed, and more. At the moment, Threads does not display your real-time location — instead, it might say something like a friend is “on the move,” according to sources familiar with the matter. You can also update your status manually, with statuses appearing in the main feed along with messages. It’s the latest effort to automate status sharing using mobile phone sensors and one-tap status sharing.

A very cool “Today in Apple History” from our friends over at Cult of Mac. Sunday marked the three year anniversary of the extremely rare “Celebration” Apple-1 being sold at auction for $815, 000. Made by Steve Wozniak, it featured blank “green” PCB board that never appeared in public production models.

The Apple-1 was Apple’s first computer. It launched in July 1976, a year before the better-known, vastly superior Apple II. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak started working on the Apple-1 as a hobby, with no goal beyond showing it off to the people at the local Homebrew Computer Club, which he attended. “I did this computer … to show the people at Homebrew that it was possible to build a very affordable computer — a real computer you could program for the price of the Altair — with just a few chips,” Wozniak recalled in his autobiography, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon. Steve Jobs convinced Woz they should build and sell the Apple-1 rather than giving away the designs.

The Atlantic is set to introduce a paywall, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move follows a delayed instigated by majority owner Laurene Powell Jobs. She invested in the 162-year-old magazine through her Emmerson Collective in July 2017. The widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, she reportedly wanted to focus on improving its platform and business events first.

Atlantic President Bob Cohn said that when Ms. Powell Jobs explained the details of her investment plan to the magazine’s managers, they felt delaying the paywall launch made sense. “We were about to make dozens of hires that would ultimately lead to the creation of an even better paywall,” said Mr. Cohn, who is leaving in early September for a fellowship at Harvard. People at the Atlantic said Ms. Powell Jobs has taken a mostly hands-off approach to day-to-day matters, but weighs in on key decisions.