How AI Is Beginning To Redefine the Auto Industry

It's not just performance; AI is changing the way the industry conceptualizes the manufacturing, marketing and monetization of transportation. JL

Business Wire reports:

As AI adoption peaks, organizations are realizing the need to leverage advanced algorithms and computational structures, innovative testing and validation platforms, integrated cockpit solutions, and 5G network adoption and application deployment for building their next generation mobility services. AI is thus driving merger and acquisition trends in the automotive sector. Customizations are increasingly replacing traditional automotive platforms, fueling the development of intelligent platforms covering in-vehicle experiences, supply chains, automotive sales and marketing, insurance tools, vehicle e-commerce and other applications

Why You Need To Tip Your Uber Driver More - And More Often

How come so many Uber and Lyft passengers are such cheap pricks? And that means you.

So don't be all surprised and pissed off when prices go up. Look in the mirror. JL

Jordan Weissmann reports in Slate:

60% of Uber’s riders don’t tip at all. Just 1 percent tip each time. And when riders do tip, the average is about $3. Uber drivers are tipped less than taxi drivers because tipping happens after the ride is over and not face to face. Your Uber driver does not earn very much. Contractors gross around $20 per hour, but that’s before the cost of repairing wear and tear on their vehicles, insurance, and gas. Once you do include those, drivers earn a bit under $12 per hour; the hourly rate drops closer to $9 if you take self-employment taxes into account.

Digital Versions of Favorite Movie and Rock Stars Are Taking Over the Screen

What is reality in a digitally denominated era? JL

Charles Bromesco reports in The Verge:

Entertainment is facing an invasion of non-people with striking similarities to real people. The digitization of A-listers is spreading in Hollywood productions, allowing for lifelike simulations of actors and other notables to creep in and undermine everything we once took for granted about performing. As technology mimics human expression, our understanding of concepts like acting, personhood, and realism will have to be rejiggered to account for a new state of the art. The Screen Actors Guild can ensure everyone gets compensated fairly when holograms take their jobs, but digital replacements of actors are going to alter the principles of the acting craft.

Pokemon Go Mapped the World. Now It's Mapping You

You thought this was just a game? JL

Cecelia D'Anastasio and Dhruv Mehrota report in Kotaku:

Today, when you use Wizards Unite or Pokémon Go or any of Niantic’s other apps, your every move is getting documented and stored—up to 13 times a minute. Even players who know that the apps record their location data are usually astonished once they look at how much they’ve told Niantic about their lives through their footsteps. Ubiquitous computing is ready. The fantasy is that any system mediating someone’s personal experience of the physical world that uses a modern corporation’s digital infrastructure would be objective or neutral. Humans are data and data is money, and this is the business model of many technology firms

Smart Speakers Are Easily Hacked To Become Smart Spies

Google and Amazon seem to be continuously playing catch-up, perhaps because the hacking is not really interfering with their primary objective, which is collecting data and revenue. JL

Dan Goodin reports in ars technica:

By now, the privacy threats posed by Amazon Alexa and Google Home are common knowledge. Now, there's a new concern: malicious apps developed by third parties and hosted by Amazon or Google. Hackers developed eight apps—four Alexa "skills" and four Google Home "actions"—that all passed Amazon or Google security-vetting processes. The skills or actions posed as simple apps for checking horoscopes, with the exception of one, which masqueraded as a random-number generator. Behind the scenes, these "smart spies,"  eavesdropped on users and phished for their passwords.

How A Face Scanning Algorithm Increasingly Decides Who Gets A Job

There are no objective standards set by industry bodies, no oversight, review of the algorithm's reasoning or right of appeal if it discriminates or makes a mistake.

Demanding accountability of such systems may be the next big battlefield in workplace rights. JL


Drew Harwell reports in the Washington Post:

The system uses candidates’ computer or cellphone cameras to analyze their facial movements, word choice and speaking voice before ranking them against other applicants based on an automatically generated “employability” score. “AI-driven assessments” have become so pervasive that universities make special efforts to train students on how to look and speak for best results. More than 100 employers now use the system. But some AI researchers argue the system is digital snake oil — a blend of superficial measurements not rooted in scientific fact. Analyzing a human being like this could end up penalizing anyone else who doesn’t fit the model for look and speech. Just what does the perfect employee look and sound like, anyway?

Why the Millennial Urban Life Style Is Becoming More Expensive

All those relatively inexpensive lifestyle services were built on the back of two primary foundations: underpaid labor and the greater fool theory that someone would buy an unprofitable but fast growing business. 

That pipedream is over and those who built a life around it are about to start paying retail. JL


Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

If you wake up on a Casper mattress, work out with a Peloton before breakfast, Uber to your desk at a WeWork, order DoorDash for lunch, take a Lyft home, and get dinner through Postmates, you’ve interacted with seven companies that will collectively lose nearly $14 billion this year. For consumers—if not for many beleaguered contract workers—the Millennial Lifestyle Sponsorhip is a deal, a capital-to-labor transfer of wealth. But this was never going to last. WeWork’s disastrous IPO has triggered reverberations; from magic to margins. Venture capitalists have re-embraced an old mantra: Profits matter. And higher profits can only mean urban lifestyles are about to get more expensive.

Facial Recognition Software Identifies Patients From MRI Scans

Reaction to date suggest there are more concerns about the implications of privacy threats than any medical breakthrough.

Advances in technological power assisted by AI increasingly render anonymity impossible to maintain. JL

Melanie Evans reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Facial-recognition software correctly matched photos of research volunteers to unidentified medical scans of their heads, in a new study of images that are commonly used in brain research. The finding draws attention to a privacy threat that will increase with technology improvements and the growth of health-care data. Information on the identities of participants is typically kept separate from the data, to protect patients’ privacy as databases of information get shared. But other studies have identified people from genetic information and data from wearable activity-monitoring devices that had been stripped of personal information.

How Technology Has Warped Our Sense Of Time

What does now even mean in algorithmic, curated, social media and news feed denominated time? JL

Katherine Miller reports in Buzzfeed:

This is why algorithmic time is so disorienting and why it bends your mind. Everything good, bad, and complicated flows through our phones, and for those not living some hippie Walden trip, we operate inside a technological experience that moves forward and back, and pulls you with it. The algorithms that are never quite with you in the moment, the imperishable supply of new Instagram stories, the scrolling through what you said six hours ago, the four new texts, the four versions of the same news alert. The thing you’ve been waiting for — it’s always there, pulling you back under again and again and again. Who can remember anything anymore?

Hotel Robots Hacked So Perps Could Watch Guests

Of course, in today's social media obsessed culture, there could be guests who find that a feature not a bug. JL

John Oates reports in The Register:

The Henn na Hotel is staffed by robots: guests can be checked in by humanoid or dinosaur reception bots before proceeding to their room. (But) its in-room robots were hackable to allow pervs to remotely view video footage from the devices.Facial recognition tech will let customers into their room and then a bedside robot will assist with other requirements. A security researcher revealed that he had warned HIS Group in July about the bed-bots being easily accessible, noting they sported "unsigned code" allowing a user to tap an NFC tag to the back of robot's head and allow access via the streaming app of their choice.

Whither the Ping Pong Table: Which Perks Matter Most To Employees

Perks' value may be more symbolic than economic, but that symbolism may provide real competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent. JL

Knowledge@Wharton reports:

Perks — extras that range from free beer at work to bereavement leave when a pet dies to unlimited vacation time — have been big in many a workplace for a while now. What’s less clear, though, is the extent to which the movement as a whole has produced real value to employers and employees. These policies  attract and retain talent. “They are ways to stand out among all the opportunities that top job applicants have. The value added of the top talent to their company is very large —  the top 1% of a company generates 15% to 20% of value-added.”In addition to appealing to star performers, “perks are symbolic of valuing employees, and people will give more when they are in a culture which is supportive and caring,”

Even Waymo Now Admits Self-Driving Cars Are Overhyped

Another Silicon Valley hype machine candidate collides with reality. JL


Jennifer Elias reports in CNBC:

Waymo executives think people have taken its promises of self-driving cars too seriously.
The Alphabet subsidiary went “through a lot of hype that was unmanageable, mismatched to what’s happening in the real world.” The company has dialed back its enthusiastic tone as it falls behind its original timeline for getting full self-driving cars on the road. Morgan Stanley cut its valuation on Waymo by 40% last month, concluding that the industry is moving toward commercialization slower than expected and that Waymo still relies on human safety drivers. No company has been more instrumental in driving the hype around self-driving than Google.

How Private Companies Could Access Human Brains And Own Their Thoughts

The technology is now considered feasible. And given how tech and social media companies have insisted that any information passing through their platforms legally belongs to them, it is probable that they will demand that any cognitive musings captured by their technology belong to them as well. JL

Oscar Schwartz reports in The Guardian:

As powerful as recommendation algorithms have become, we assume our innermost dialogue is internal unless otherwise disclosed. But recent advances in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, which integrates cognitive activity with a computer, might challenge this. In the past year, researchers demonstrated it is possible to translate from brain activity into synthetic speech or text by recording and decoding a person’s neural signals, using AI algorithms. Companies have transformed troves of personal data into profit while displaying a wanton attitude to securing such data. “I’d be very careful about giving up cognitive information to companies."

Smart Speaker Can Monitor Baby's Breathing

A potentially significant advance ad practical application for smart speakers. If the potential for manufacturer abuse of the data generated by these systems can be addressed convincingly, their usefulness may grow even faster. JL

University of Washington reports:

A new smart speaker skill lets a device use white noise to both soothe sleeping babies and monitor their breathing and movement.With this skill, the smart speaker plays white noise and records how the noise is reflected back to detect breathing motions of infants’ tiny chests. “The breathing signal is so weak that we can’t just look for a change in the overall signal we get back. We needed a way to scan the room and pinpoint where the baby is to maximize changes in the white noise signal."

How 3D Printing, Vertical Farming and Materials Science Are Overhauling Food

The productivity impact from technology will be evident almost immediately. JL

Peter Diamandis reports in Singularity Hub:

The food 3D printing industry is expected to grow at 50% annual growth.And converging exponential technologies—from materials science to AI-driven digital agriculture—are not slowing down. Today’s breakthroughs will soon allow our planet to boost its food production by nearly 70%, using a fraction of the real estate and resources. The average American meal travels 1,500-2,500 miles to get to your plate.  “We are spending more energy to get food to the table than the energy we get from eating the food.” Vertical farming (also) allows us to grow crops with 90% less water than traditional agriculture

Can Artificial Intelligence Think?

In human terms, it probably could, but it doesn't yet. JL


Daniel Shapiro comments in Forbes:

When interacting with artificial intelligence interfaces at our current level of AI technology, our human inclination is to treat them like vending machines, rather than to treat them like a person. Today's AI systems learn to think fast and automatically (like System 1), but artificial intelligence as a science doesn’t yet have a good handle on how biases, shortcuts, and generalizations get baked into the “thinking” machine during learning. With today’s AI, there is no deliberative step by step thinking process going on.

Flying Guilt? 12 Percent of Americans Take Two-Thirds Of All Flights

It takes only six round trip flights a year to qualify as a frequet flier. And while the environmental impact is important, perhaps if people got out more they would have a less insular world view. JL

Hiroko Tabuchi and Nadja Popovich report in the New York Times:

Flying isn’t a big part of the average American’s carbon footprint. Half of Americans don’t fly at all. Another third flew up to 5 times a year. A small group of frequent fliers, 12% of Americans who make more than six round trips by air a year, are responsible for two-thirds of all air travel and, by extension, two-thirds of aviation emissions. The most frequent fliers, those who take more than 9 round trips per year, emit the highest share.

Twitter Says It Now Removes Half Of All Abusive Tweets Proactively

It attributes the progress to its machine learning capabilities continuing to improve. But prominent politicians are still permitted to spread falsehoods at will. JL

Paul Sawers reports in Venture Beat:

Twitter said it now removes half of all abusive tweets proactively, without relying on anyone to report them.  Relying on user reports and human moderators to remove abuse is a near-impossible challenge on a platform of Twitter’s scale, which is why it has turned to machine learning tools to automate much of the process. This increase is largely attributable to “improving our machine-learning models in Q3” to detect potential policy violations, even though these policies don’t always apply to everyone equally.

Why Computer Programmers Struggle To Code For the Future

The required daily tradeoffs every business faces between efficiency and comprehensiveness. Except entire systems can crash if they get this wrong. JL

Greg Lavallee reports in Slate:

The four-digit solution to the Y2K problem only solved the next 8,000 years.There’s another giant date bug  in 2038. In Unix (and Linux) operating systems, time is  stored as the number of seconds since midnight on Jan. 1, 1970. This date was arbitrarily chosen for convenience. On Jan. 19, 2038 (2147483647) there won’t be enough space left to store the next second (2147483648) in many computer systems. The code may instead assume the current time is negative. This format for time is used in billions of lines of code, on all systems, to determine dates. It’s another example of how software engineers have to balance efficiency with quality

Airbnb's WeWork Problem

Have investors cooled on dominant social media brand names that don't seem to know how to make any money? JL


Kate Clark reports in Tech Crunch:

New Airbnb financials — indicating a massive increase in operating losses —  call Airbnb’s future into question. Airbnb lost $306 million on operations on $839 million in revenue, in the first quarter of 2019.  The company is gearing up for a major liquidity event next year and is making a concerted effort to rake in new customers, as any soon-to-be-public business would.Given WeWork’s sudden demise, coupled with Uber and Lyft’s lukewarm performances on the stock markets, many have wondered how Wall Street will respond to Airbnb’s eventual IPO prospectus.

Patent Filings For Generative AI Grow 500 Percent As Brands Test Its Potential

As practical applications become more apparent - and attractive - usage is growing. JL

Patrick Kulp reports in Ad Week:

They run the gamut from eBay’s plan to generate different-angled images of products in user-submitted photos for visual search to Ford and GM’s streetscape data for self-driving training to Verizon Media laying out how GANs might create individualized online ads in real time. Levi’s patent proposal detailed neural networks that know the patterns of fade and wear accumulated by old pairs of jeans. “We can identify a pattern that we want to generate in our marketing content, then GAN can understand populate it over hundreds of designs on hundreds of products. This can also boost targeting while preserving customer privacy.

Algorithms Are Grading Student Essays. Will This Really Teach Students To Write Better?

No. And given the challenges from students and their families, it is unlikely to save money, either. JL

Lauren Katz reports in Re/code:

An automated scoring company looks at how human graders behave. Then, the company trains an algorithm to make predictions as to how a human grader might score an essay based on that data. Depending on the program, those predictions can be consistently wrong in the same way. You can’t cross-examine an algorithm and get to the bottom of why it made a specific decision. The algorithms can be fooled by nonsense gibberish sophisticated words. The other problem is that some of the algorithms have been proven by the testing vendors themselves to be biased against people from certain language backgrounds

US Ban On Workforce Non Compete Agreements Is Proposed

In a full employment economy, employers have overextended the use of non-competes from technical specialists to include pizza makers and shop clerks, which has led to bi-partisan push back in the US Senate that will probably find a receptive audience in the US House of Representatives, as well. JL


Timothy Lee reports in ars technica:

Noncompete agreements ban workers from performing similar work at competing firms for a limited period—often one or two years. Many Silicon Valley technology companies were started by engineers who had great ideas but couldn't get their employers to take them. California law ensures workers have the option to quit and pursue their idea independently. These agreements have become widely used in recent decades—and not just for employees with sensitive business intelligence or client. "We heard from people working at pizza parlors, yogurt shops, hairdressers, and people making sandwiches." 

Ecommerce Is Driving Bigger Demand For Smaller Urban Warehouses

To make one day delivery work, inventory has to be stored closer to the customer, which means smaller, more easily accessible facilities. Urban density and higher real estate taxes also make smaller sites more financially practical. JL


Jennifer Smith reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Demand for smaller warehouses is soaring as e-commerce and the push for faster delivery accelerates competition for industrial space close to major population centers. Rents for U.S. warehouses of between 70,000 and 120,000 square feet rose by more than 33.7% over the past five years. One factor driving up rents for smaller warehouses is that most construction in recent years has focused on bigger logistics sites.Developers looking to build industrial space in  urban areas face “competition with retail, multifamily, offices and mixed-use developments that generate higher taxes and higher rents.”

Best Buy Challenges Amazon With Free Next Day Delivery Over the Holidays

Best Buy is only offering this for the holidays, which may make a lot of sense from an operational and financial standpoint, especially given the horror stories about injuries coming out of Amazon's fulfillment centers. JL

Christine Fisher reports in Engadget:

The expedited shipping will be available to almost everyone (99 percent of customers) and include almost everything (except heavier items like big-screen TVs and refrigerators). If customers are outside of the next-day zone, they'll still get free standard shipping. This offer could make Best Buy more of a threat to Amazon, especially because Best Buy's shipping is free and Amazon customers still have to sign up for Prime to get the free delivery

What's Driving China's Global Leadership in Technology?

Venture capital from China - and the US - as well as government support and an entrepreneurial culture have all contributed to China's successful rise as a global tech leader.

The question is to what degree concerns about the country's influence on its tech companies will seriously limit global acceptance of its products. JL

Knowledge@Wharton interviews Rebecca Fannin:

China’s technology sector has grown so rapidly in the last two decades that it is pushing the United States out of its position at the top of the digital food chain. Some of it has to do with venture capital investment. Some of that venture capital investment has come from Sand Hill Road, funded by our pension funds, our universities, our endowments, our family offices. But the spending of venture capitalists in China is almost equal to the spending in the U.S. A lot of it has to do with China’s entrepreneurial culture. China (also) has top-down government directives propelling the country forward in technology.

It Starts Tonight, But Machine Learning Has Already Predicted the World Series Winner

The Series starts tonight, but machine learning has already predicted that the winner will be the Houston Astros. Whether that proves true or not remains to be seen.

That, as the saying goes, is why they play the game. JL


Andrew Tarantola reports in Engadget:

You may remember the Silicon Valley startup Unanimous AI from 2016, when its human-augmented AI platform correctly guessed 11 of 15 Academy Award winners. The company followed that feat in 2017 when it successfully predicted the top four winners of that year's Kentucky Derby -- a Superfecta that returned 540-to-1 odds. This year, the company has turned its predictive services toward Major League Baseball. "We're currently 75 percent accurate."

Vatican Issues Smart Rosary, Which Is Promptly Hacked

Not sure if eprayer works as well as the old fashioned kind, but those hackers are messing with some powerful sources of retribution. JL


Rachel Kaser reports in The Next Web:

The Click to Pray eRosary is a smart device that functions as a sort of Fitbit for prayer. It’s activated when you make the sign of the cross, and tracks your steps, calories, and location. When you wish to pray, you can use the Click to Pray app to pick a particular rosary. “Once the prayer begins, the smart rosary shows the user’s progress throughout the different mysteries and keeps track of each rosary completed.” One security researcher discovered a security flaw in the app. It has now been fixed.

Builders, Banks Seek To Make It Easier To Discriminate Using Algorithmic Tools

Most credit checks are done by algorithmic systems. The US passed a law six years ago mandating that such processes take discrimination into account. The real estate and banking industries are now trying to get that overturned. JL


Colin Lecher reports in The Verge:

Landlords and lenders are pushing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to make it easier for businesses to discriminate against possible tenants using automated tools. In deciding whether to rent or sell someone a home, businesses run background checks, calculate insurance costs, examine credit, and take account of an applicant’s history. The tools that are used can have a devastating cost: a faulty or biased algorithm won’t just harm a single person, but can shut people out of housing in entire neighborhoods.

How People Get Clickbaited By Their Own Brain

Survival versus curiousity.

The conflict in human brains between long and short term interests is what makes people click on an article about the Kardashians when they are actually interested in macroeconomics.

And yes, the contribution of the one to the other is as random as it sounds. JL


Douglas Willingham comments in the New York Times:

When surfing the web I want to be drawn in by articles on  nature of quasars, but I end up reading a menu from Alcatraz prison. Why am I not curious about the things I want to be curious about? Across evolutionary time, curious animals were more likely to survive because they learned about their environments. The disconnect between long- and short-term interests makes frothy articles frustrating. The feeling of curiosity promised you’d learn something but you’re disappointed because your new knowledge doesn’t contribute to your long-term interests. You’ve been clickbaited by your own brain.

What If the Real Driver Of Innovation Isn't Smart Nerds, But Government Investment?

The tech foundation myth of a few smart guys tinkering in Silicon Valley garages leaves out a big part of the real story. JL


Rafael Medeiros reports in Wired:

The internet began as a network  called Arpanet, funded by the US Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD was also behind GPS, the hard disk drive, microprocessors, memory chips  LCD, Microsoft Windows, videoconferencing, Google Maps, Linux and the cloud.. Siri was the outcome of a Stanford Research project commissioned by  (DARPA). The touchscreen was the result of research funded by the National Science Foundation and the CIA.“Steve Jobs has rightly been called a genius for the visionary products he conceived, [but] this story creates a myth about the origin of Apple’s success. Without public investment behind the computer and internet revolutions, such attributes might have led only to a new toy.”

The Phone Call Isn't Dead. It's Evolving

Talking on the phone may be making a comeback, but this is not your parents or grandparents form of communication.

Multichannel - voice, text, video - may be the wave of the future. JL

Katherine Bindley reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Talking was the most popular way to communicate via cellphone in the fall of 2012, with 94% having done so in the prior week. By the spring of 2019, talking had fallen to least popular, behind texting, emailing, posting to social media and using chat apps, with just 45% doing it in the prior week. In other words, less than half had used their phone for an actual phone call. “You have to balance things that are better about audio with things that are annoying.”

How Smartphones Became the Remote Control of Life

Has it really been only 12 years? That's not even a blip in time for what has become an epochal, life-changing technology. JL

Roger Cheng reports in Cnet:

Of various technologies over the past decade, none has changed our lives as dramatically as the smartphone. When the original iPhone launched, and the first Android phone followed in 2008, they were still the stuff of gadget enthusiasts with loads of disposable income."It's astonishing how quickly we've gone from being astonished to having an always-connected supercomputer in our pockets to somewhat resenting having a supercomputer in our pockets."

Is Blockchain Ethics A Contradiction In Terms?

Despite all of those who tout its security creds, blockchain was created to hide transactions from authorities who might want to regulate - or tax - the activities initiated under its protection - like that of cryptocurrencies.

As blockchain attempts to move mainstream and shed its unsavory beginnings, it is becoming even more imperative that transparent rules govern its behavior. JL 

Mike Orcutt reports in MIT Technology Review:

Like other “tech ethics” fields, blockchain ethics should examine what the technology is capable of doing, and ponder the potential consequences. Blockchains make it possible to create leaderless, “decentralized” organizations. Does that mean no one is responsible if something goes wrong? In public blockchains like Bitcoin, shared software rules automatically sort out what behavior is allowed. If a user exploits the protocol for profit without breaking rules, is that unethical? Digital currencies might change the nature of money. How might that change politics and power dynamics?

Will IoT And the End Of Moore's Law Contribute To Climate Change?

Unless new innovations in technology dramatically improve productivity and lower energy use, the answer to the question is yes. JL


Dean Takahashi reports in Venture Beat:

150 billion chips shipped, 50 billion coming in the next two years, a trillion IOT devices by 2035 eventually leads to a data explosion. But I’m concerned that Moore’s Law is slowing down at the same time this happens. Does that mean that we have to build a ton of new things, a ton of new datacenters, all kinds of new computers, without the efficiency gains of Moore’s Law? And if that’s true, what is the ultimate impact on climate change?

The 'Not-Com' Bubble Is Popping

Companies like WeWork, Uber et al that use tech but aren't really tech companies have grabbed most of the headlines - and generated most of the losses.

Real tech companies that focus on software services for business or companies that make products to sell to consumers, are doing fine. JL

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

When Netscape went public on August 9, 1995—the day many cite as the beginning of the dot-com bubble—its stock skyrocketed from $28 to $75 in hours, even though the company wasn’t profitable. Today, Unicorns with no positive earnings are getting slaughtered. WeWork fell 80% pre-IPO when investors balked at losses. Peloton, Lyft, and Uber have also struggled. The problematic firms are those that aren’t pure tech. Either they sell hardware plus software or they own a digital marketplace for humans to transact goods and services in the physical world. Consumer tech grabs most of the headlines. But enterprise tech grabs most of the profit. Tech IPOs have been strong “as long as you’re buying a real tech company."

The Reason Safety Experts Say Amazon Workers Should Unionize

Injury rates for Amazon warehouse workers are three times the national average. One day shipping is expected to make the situation worse because instead of hiring additional workers, the company wants current employees to work faster.

Safety experts recommend that its workers unionize as a means of forcing the company to pay more attention to dangerous working conditions. JL

Alexia Campbell reports in Re/code Lauren Gurley reports in Vice:

A “production-obsessed culture” at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center found the injury rate is three times the national average. 66% of the workers surveyed said they experience physical pain while performing work duties and 42% said they continue experiencing pain when they aren’t working. Amazon is one of the most dangerous places to work in the US, based on its warehouse conditions: higher-than-average injury rates, unnecessary risks, and an unwillingness to address workers’ concerns. Amazon workers are trying to unionize. They’re afraid for their safety and expect conditions to get worse with one-day shipping becoming more widespread.

Amazon Is Causing FedEx CEO Founder To Reinvent It

Thanks to Amazon most of the delivery business has shifted from air to ground, which is more expensive because it requires more people and tangible assets like trucks.

FedEx has cut its ties to Amazon, betting on its competitors. That is not a bet that ever has paid off for anyone else. JL


Paul Ziobro reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Amazon has morphed from a customer into a competitor. It now delivers half its orders. Most of the growth in shipments is coming from e-commerce orders, which increasingly need to travel from a warehouse to a nearby home, not long distances overnight. Dropping one or two packages at a home is costlier than dropping off a large number of packages at a retailer or office. FedEx stopped delivering nearly all Amazon packages in the U.S., letting contracts worth some $900 million in annual revenue expire. FedEx wants to be known as the shipping company that is aligned with Walmart Inc., Target Corp. and others that compete with Amazon.

Why Customer Ratings May Miscalculate Consumer Behavior

Consumers have become more sophisticated about surveys, ratings and the purposes to which they are put. Their answers are frequently more nuanced than those interpreting the data - who may be projecting their own biases - might believe.

The most important caveat in assessing such data is that the complexity of human emotions - especially ambivalence - may be reflected in their responses to questions about what they like or dislike. To optimize the value of customer attitudes, it is prudent to assume there is little that is black and white. JL


Christina Stahlkopf reports in Harvard Business Review:

Only half the people who expressed an intention to recommend firms actually did so. 52% of  people who discouraged others from using a brand also recommended it. While enthusiasts extol the virtues of a brand, that doesn’t mean they like every product. According to their ratings, 50% of customers were promoters, but 69% of customers had recommended a brand. Detractors were seven times more likely to have either recommended a brand or said nothing other than disparage it. Actual behavioral patterns didn’t align with expectations created by the ratings.

Accessibility, The Future - And Why Dominos Matters

The question of whether a website is a public accomodation under the law, just like a store, could impact who has access to the internet and in what ways in the future. JL

Kate Cox reports in ars technica:

Is a website or an app a "public accommodation" under the law the same way a brick-and-mortar storefront is, therefore making it subject to the same requirements? If inclusive design has low-hanging fruit, it's the right thing to do, and it's cheaper to do it right the first time... why is accessibility still so contentious? The perception many companies have when it comes to accessibility: "It's difficult." "We are primarily focused on the afterwards clean up, because that is where the legal exposure exists."

The Reason Unicorns Love Recessions

Less competition, more people, equipment and real estate available at lower prices - and more opportunity for good products and services. JL

Mario Gamper reports in Venture Beat:

The last recession was a pretty awesome time to launch a company. Airbnb was founded in 2008 and is currently valued at $35 billion. Pinterest, founded in 2009, was last valued at $10.6 billion. Looking back through history, a pattern extends beyond the startup: Apple, Microsoft, General Electric, IBM, General Motors, Burger King, CNN, and Disney were all founded during recessions. Economic downturns weed out obsolescent business models and products. This frees up the market for new players with strong products. There is also less competition for top talent and great office space, both of which are key to scaling a new business.

Why the Tech Industry Is Making Everything Louder

It's not just devices. The data centers that power those gadgets emit constant noise so loud and unnerving that people across the world are starting to protest. JL

Bianca Bosker reports in The Atlantic:

The nature of noise is shifting. Sonic gripes from the 18th and 19th centuries—church bells, carriage wheels, street criers—sound charming to today’s ears. Since then our soundscape has been overpowered by data centers, which are spreading in lockstep with our online obsession. Communities in France, Ireland, Norway, Canada, North Carolina, Montana, Virginia, Colorado, Delaware, and Illinois have all protested the whine of data centers.

How Propaganda Works In the Digital Age

Disinform and distract. JL


Sean Illing reports in Vox:

In a fragmented media environment, an Orwellian top-down model of propaganda just doesn’t make sense.In the digital age, news consumption is like shopping. Propaganda today is about pushing conspiracy theories or misleading spin. Purveyors of propaganda want you to think that to be real, we’ve got to counterbalance everything. Transforming politics into a post-truth contest of tribal identity is an explicit goal of modern propaganda. The main goal is to undercut the idea of truth and distract the audience. Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon described Trump’s media strategy as “flooding the zone with shit.”

Software Reveals the Factors That Make A City Great

Vibrancy and similar intangibles are what differentiate great cities from the run-of-the-mill. Which adds urgency to the task of figuring out how to measure them. JL


arXiv reports in MIT Technology Review:

One of the key properties of cities is how successful they are in creating vibrant communities. The most convincing  (theory) is (that) vibrant city life can flourish only in neighborhoods that serve two or more functions, to attract people with different purposes throughout the day and night. City blocks must be small, with numerous intersections that force pedestrians to interact. And the buildings must be diverse and dense to support a mix of tenants. The creation of high-quality maps (and) software for analyzing and visualizing open-source mapping data has shown how different cities can be.

The Lines of Code That Changed Everything

The often obscure and hidden influences that have shaped our lives. JL

Slate reports:

Code shapes our lives.Culturally, code exists in a nether zone. We can feel its effects on our reality, but we rarely see it, and it’s inscrutable to non-initiates. (The folks in Silicon Valley like it; it helps them self-mythologize as wizards.) Computer scientists, software developers, historians, policymakers, and journalists were asked to pick: Which code had a huge influence? It’s not a comprehensive list. It’s meant to help us ponder how code undergirds our lives and decisions made by programmers ripple into the future. The most consequential code creates new behaviors by removing friction.When software makes it easier to do something, we do more of it.

How Kids' Photos Posted Innocently On Social Media Are Powering Surveillance AI

It is prudent to assume that if you post photos on social media, they will be scraped for other purposes.

But states are beginning to pass legislation making misuse of such photos illegal. Lawsuits, some in the billions of dollars, have followed. Whether that will stop the big tech companies remains to be seen. JL


Kashmir Hill and Aaron Krolik report in the New York Times:

In 2014, seeking to advance the cause of computer vision, Yahoo unveiled “the largest public multimedia collection ever released,” featuring 100 million photos and videos. Yahoo got the images from Flickr, a subsidiary. Users weren’t notified that their photos were included. Each photo includes a numerical identifier that links back to the Flickr photographer’s account. The Times was able to trace photos in the database to the people who took them. More than 200 class-action lawsuits alleging misuse of biometrics have been filed including a $35 billion case against Facebook for using face recognition to tag people in photos.