Lauren Smiley

How porch camera culture intersects chaotically with social media, class, and race - and escalated a feud between a package thief and tech-boom San Franciscans.

Karen Navarra was a quiet woman in her 60s who lived alone with cats. She was found beaten to death. The neighbors didn't see anything, but her Fitbit did.

An 8-part podcast on the family who appeared like the perfect interracial family on Facebook, but had a long trail of abuse that ended off a California cliff.

The true crime story of a prolific Facebook "master post-er" - who for years shielded her family's problems from scrutiny via her posts until, investigators believe, she intentionally drove them off a California cliff.

The story on an Indian techie killed in a Kansas bar by a white man who screamed "Get out of my country!"

An overseas workers conversing with US seniors - via a puppy avatar.

Max Whittaker for The New York Times
This article is part of our ongoing Fast Forward series, which examines technological, economic, social and cultural shifts that happen as businesses evolve.
The Central Valley of California doesn’t begin so much with a gradual change in the landscape as with an abrupt line. Suddenly, a barren plain that looks like an apt cue for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” theme song is interrupted by the first row of leafy, irrigated crops.
Since the 1930s, the regi...

The cultural shift of an on-demand world: getting used to getting served.

My report on the near minimum wage workers in an Instagram factory.

A Silicon Valley idealist sets out to automate the fast food business he grew up in.

In a Silicon Valley Hooverville next to the Stanford campus - people live in a line of Jaycos and Winnebagos.

A report on partisans entering local news in a time of newsroom layoffs and readers looking for views they agree with from their Facebook foxholes.

The housemates who are taking on Twitter's bots - publically identifying them on the platform.

Hell is other parents' screen-time policies.

What it means when tech workers get off the Google bus and into the resistance.