Best of the Web: Why the media took so long to find the story of Nigeria’s missing schoolgirls

One of the most tragic stories in recent memory, the kidnapping and disappearance of young schoolgirls in Nigeria, was also one of the most ignored by mainstream media.

Teju Cole writes about the missing Nigerian girls for The New Yorker, giving voice to their as-yet unknown story. He imagines what life must be like just now for these schoolgirls kidnapped for sale as slaves. He wonders what they could be thinking…

“They are not thinking of Twitter, where the captivity is the cause of the day, nor of the campaigns on the streets of Lagos, nor of the rallies in front of Nigeria’s embassies. They are perhaps thinking only that night is falling again, and that the men will come to each of them again, an unending horror.”

Scammers, be warned

Writing on Medium, Danny Bradbury asks, “Some of America’s poorest people are being targeted by cyber-scammers. Can an errant hacker find the culprits?”

“Those who imagine cybercrime as a high-tech enterprise underestimate the importance of psychology. Nigerian fraudsters advertise lottery caches that will never be won. Non-existent goods sell on eBay. Bogus technical-support experts call with news that a computer has a virus, and offer to fix it for a fee. Those who accept help find that their clean computer has been infected with software that steals passwords.”

Startups, a struggle to survive

Wired, throws the spotlight on how tough it is to make it as a startup. From the early idea to the pressure of making it happen, pivoting, starting again and getting funding, this longread takes us on a warts and all journey of trying to make it (or not) in the Valley.

“Boomtrain’s days at the office were a blur of sales calls, engineering meetings over Google+ Hangout, and pitches to investors. It seemed like an inhuman feat that Nick could keep himself awake for the sales calls, where he delivered the same pitch over and over to the same bored, nontechnical marketing people. Chris seemed to derive a lot of energy from the engineering discussions; perhaps this wasn’t quite the company they’d intended to found, but Chris is an engineering autodidact, and he drew great pleasure from the technical details of network architecture and data structure.”