2022-06-06
The Pivot to Web3 Is Going to Get People Hurt It can feel as if the entire world is bolting on crypto tokens and NFTs. Many worry the gold rush is akin to a “collective Theranos” that is warping the economy to the benefit of professional investors. https://www.vice.com/...
VICE
The pivot to Web3, driven by ideology rather than utility, is akin to a “collective Theranos” that is warping the economy to benefit professional investors
2021-09-27
Tech's market concentration—summed up brilliantly by Tom Eastman, a New Zealand software developer, as the transformation of the Internet into “a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four” https://cacm.acm.org/...
Communications of the ACM
To limit the power of Big Tech, regulators should look to mandate interoperability, which will empower users and could spark more competition
summed up brilliantly by Tom Eastman, a New Zealand software developer, as the transformation of the Internet into “a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text...
2020-10-26
“Manufacturers of a wide range of products have made it increasingly difficult over the years to repair things. Now, a movement known as “right to repair” is starting to make progress in pushing for laws that prohibit restrictions like these.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
Right to repair gains ground with proposed regulations in US and EU that would force companies to share parts, tools, and info with consumers and repair shops
Paola Rosa-Aquino / New York Times :
“Manufacturers of a wide range of products have made it increasingly difficult over the years to repair things. Now, a movement known as “right to repair” is starting to make progress in pushing for laws that prohibit restrictions like these.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
The Markup
An overview of tech issues on the ballot in November: the status of gig workers, warrantless phone searches, privacy rights, publicly-funded broadband, and more
Voters in states and cities across the country will decide some of technology's biggestquestions
2020-08-17
There's nothing “free” from Google. We pay with our data. It's time to fundamentally revisit the Facebook-Google model, because it's destroying democracy and decent society -Google says Australian news rule threatens free search services | Financial Times https://www.ft.com/...
Financial Times
Google warns Australians that a plan to make it pay for news content threatens privacy, free Search and YouTube; Australia says the open letter contains misinfo
Internet group has also paused licensing deals with outlets due to proposed regulation — Google has warned …
2020-06-09
Nextdoor may have launched as an app to “spread the word about a lost dog” or “find a new home for an outgrown bicycle” but the company needs to ask itself: how useful is it if black members don't feel safe on the platform? https://www.theverge.com/...
The Verge
Nextdoor's reliance on untrained volunteer moderators has raised concerns over censorship and targeting of people of color, an issue amplified by recent events
Kalkidan G. moved to Rancho Santa Fe because it was one of the nicer neighborhoods in San Diego.
2020-05-15
Ads are the oil industry of the Web. One of the most culturally damaging things the Web has done is feed a culture of free. Nothing is free. We pay with ads in so many ways. Ads are like plastic; hugely polluting, tremendously wasteful. https://venturebeat.com/...
VentureBeat
From August, Chrome will start blocking ads that consume 4MB of network data, 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30 second period, or 60 seconds of total CPU usage
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat :
2019-11-08
The new dot com bubble is here: it's called online advertising - “What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons,” said an ad man - The Correspondent https://thecorrespondent.com/ ...
The Correspondent
Skeptics say the effectiveness of online ads is misleading because the benchmarks marketers use don't distinguish people buying from ads and those buying anyway
The Correspondent : Tweets: @alicesalisburyj , @flexlibris , @thepunkrockshop , @theofanning , @gerrymcgovern , @ingridlunden , @woganmay , @radiomorgenland , @saminprint , @froll...
2019-10-20
Software engineers are being asked to articulate what it means to be fair in their code. This is why regulators around the world are now grappling with a question: How can you mathematically quantify fairness? https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
MIT Technology Review
A game made with a real world dataset of defendants shows the shortcomings of COMPAS, an AI-powered risk assessment tool used in the US criminal legal system
Sundays are for making a house into a home … Tweets: Karen Hao / @_karenhao : IT'S HERE!!! The biggest story I've ever worked on. @techreview's very first interactive ever, which w...
2019-09-29
AI is an energy hog: the volume of calculations needed to be a leader in A.I. tasks like language understanding, game playing and common-sense reasoning has soared an estimated 300,000 times in the last six years. https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
AI research increasingly requires datacenter-scale computation, raising concerns that only a few big tech companies will dominate advances in the field
Each big step of progress in computing — from mainframe to personal computer to internet to smartphone — has opened opportunities …
2019-09-28
AI is an energy hog: the volume of calculations needed to be a leader in A.I. tasks like language understanding, game playing and common-sense reasoning has soared an estimated 300,000 times in the last six years. https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
AI research increasingly requires datacenter-scale computation, raising concerns that only a few big tech companies will dominate advances in the field
Each big step of progress in computing — from mainframe to personal computer to internet to smartphone — has opened opportunities …