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Uber and Lyft finally admit they’re making traffic congestion worse in cities - 19 décembre 2019
Ride-hailing accounts for up to 14 percent of vehicle miles traveled in some cities, according to a study commissioned by Uber and Lyft
Uber and Lyft have long argued that ride-hailing apps have the potential to make cities better by easing traffic and reducing personal car ownership. And every time a study (...)
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The Terror Queue - 18 décembre 2019
These moderators help keep Google and YouTube free of violent extremism — and now some of them have PTSD
GoogleGoogle and YouTube approach content moderation the same way all of the other tech giants do : paying a handful of other companies to do most of the work. One of those companies, Accenture, operates (...)
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Facebook tells US attorney general it won’t remove encryption from its messaging apps - 13 décembre 2019
Law enforcement is ticked off about Facebook’s privacy pivot
Facebook executives told Attorney General William Barr that the company would not provide law enforcement with investigative access to its encrypted messaging products ahead of a senate hearing on encryption on Tuesday.
In a letter, WhatsApp and (...)
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The ‘Amazon effect’ is flooding a struggling recycling system with cardboard - 3 décembre 2019
More cardboard could wind up in landfills
This holiday season, the popularity of online shopping collides with upheaval in cardboard recycling. China’s 2017 decision to turn away America’s trash has left the recycling industry reeling as it figures out what to do with all the packaging online shoppers leave behind. (...)
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Amazon reportedly plans bigger cashierless supermarkets for 2020 - 20 novembre 2019
Amazon is reportedly planning a big expansion for its cashierless store format in 2020.
According to Bloomberg, the retail giant wants to open both larger supermarkets and smaller pop-up stores as early as the first quarter of 2020, both using the same Amazon Go technology that creates a shopping experience (...)
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A Facebook content moderation vendor is quitting the business after two Verge investigations - 31 octobre 2019
Moderators complained of filthy offices and severe mental health strain
The professional services firm Cognizant will exit the content moderation business after two Verge investigations into working conditions at sites dedicated to Facebook, the companies said today. Cognizant had hired thousands of moderators (...)
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A health care algorithm affecting millions is biased against black patients - 25 octobre 2019
A health care algorithm makes black patients substantially less likely than their white counterparts to receive important medical treatment. The major flaw affects millions of patients, and was just revealed in research published this week in the journal Science.
The study does not name the makers of the (...)
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AI "˜emotion recognition’ can’t be trusted - 5 octobre 2019
The belief that facial expressions reliably correspond to emotions is unfounded, says a new review of the field
As artificial intelligence is used to make more decisions about our lives, engineers have sought out ways to make it more emotionally intelligent. That means automating some of the emotional tasks that (...)
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READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF MARK ZUCKERBERG’S LEAKED INTERNAL FACEBOOK MEETINGS - 1er octobre 2019
Highlights from two hours of leaked audio from recent Q&A sessions with Facebook’s CEO
On October 1st, The Verge published text and audio from recent internal meetings at Facebook where CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered tough questions from employees who are concerned about the company’s future. In two July (...)
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The Trauma Floor - The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America - 30 septembre 2019
The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die.
She spent the past three and a half weeks in training, trying to harden herself against the daily onslaught of disturbing posts : the hate speech, the violent attacks, the graphic pornography. In a few more days, she will become a full-time Facebook content (...)
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A pioneer in predictive policing is starting a troubling new project - 30 septembre 2019
Pentagon-funded research aims to predict when crimes are gang-related
Jeff Brantingham is as close as it gets to putting a face on the controversial practice of "predictive policing." Over the past decade, the University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted his Pentagon-funded research in (...)
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Border agents are checking entrants’ Facebook and Twitter profiles "” but we still don’t know how closely - 1er septembre 2019
Earlier this week, incoming Harvard freshman Ismail B. Ajjawi found himself blocked from entering the US. Ajjawi, a Palestinian resident of Lebanon, had landed in Boston before the start of classes. But The Harvard Crimson reported that after hours of questioning, US Customs and Border Protection agents revoked (...)
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Netflix explains why it snuck a physical... - 3 août 2019
Netflix explains why it snuck a physical activity tracker onto some phones
Netflix was researching how to improve video quality when you’re on the go
Netflix managed to alarm some Android users who noticed that the popular streaming app was detecting their physical motion activity without explaining why. The (...)
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The Trauma Floor - 31 juillet 2019
The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America
The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die.
She spent the past three and a half weeks in training, trying to harden herself against the daily onslaught of disturbing posts : the hate speech, the violent attacks, the graphic pornography. In a few (...)
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Twitter won’t hide Donald Trump’s racist tweets - 17 juillet 2019
Twitter won’t be treating President Donald Trump’s recent tweets telling congresswomen to "go back" to their supposed home countries as a violation of its hateful conduct policy, the company confirmed to The Verge. That means the tweets won’t trigger a flagging system Twitter announced last month, intended to limit (...)
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Facebook’s $5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke - 15 juillet 2019
Facebook gets away with it again
Facebook’s stock went up after news of a record-breaking $5 billion FTC fine for various privacy violations broke today.
That, as The New York Times’ Mike Isaac points out, is the real story here : the United States government spent months coming up with a punishment for Facebook’s (...)
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Amazon confirms it holds on to Alexa data even if you delete audio files - 4 juillet 2019
"˜The American people deserve to understand how their personal data is being used’
Amazon has admitted that it doesn’t always delete the stored data that it obtains through voice interactions with the company’s Alexa and Echo devices "” even after a user chooses to wipe the audio files from their account. The (...)
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Controversial deepfake app DeepNude shuts down hours after being exposed - 28 juin 2019
Less than a day after receiving widespread attention, the deepfake app that used AI to create fake nude photos of women is shutting down. In a tweet, the team behind DeepNude said they "greatly underestimated" interest in the project and that "the probability that people will misuse it is too high."
DeepNude (...)
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Amazon shareholders vote down proposals on facial recognition and climate change - 23 mai 2019
Amazon shareholders have voted down proposals meant to curb sales of the company’s controversial facial recognition tool and to limit its carbon output.
The proposals, which were driven by shareholding activists and employees, were nonbinding, but represented a moment of defiance against Amazon. The company’s (...)
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How Amazon automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for ‘productivity’ - 25 avril 2019
Documents show how the company tracks and terminates workers
Amazon’s fulfillment centers are the engine of the company — massive warehouses where workers track, pack, sort, and shuffle each order before sending it on its way to the buyer’s door.
Critics say those fulfillment center workers face strenuous (...)
