The New York Times reports: An Amazon order starts with a tap of a finger. Two days later — or even in a matter of hours — the package arrives. It seems simple enough. But to deliver Amazon orders and countless others from businesses that sell over the internet, the very fabric of major urban areas around the world is being transformed. And New York City, where more than 1.5
Internet
October 10, 2019
What Jeff Bezos wants for his empire and himself, and what that means for the rest of us
Franklin Foer writes: I first grew concerned about Amazon’s power five years ago. I felt anxious about how the company bullied the book business, extracting ever more favorable terms from the publishers that had come to depend on it. When the conglomerate Hachette, with which I’d once published a book, refused to accede to Amazon’s demands, it was punished. Amazon delayed shipments of Hachette books; when consumers searched for some
October 3, 2019
Political operatives are faking voter outrage with millions of made-up comments to benefit the rich and powerful
BuzzFeed reports: In the spring of 2017, a virtual war was raging over the future of the internet, much of it through comments on the website of the Federal Communications Commission — the government agency responsible for regulating the broadband industry. Reeves wasn’t the only ghost to get sucked in from beyond the grave to do battle on behalf of giant telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Comcast. At issue
August 31, 2019
How Amazon’s next-day delivery network brought chaos, exploitation, and danger to communities across America
BuzzFeed reports: Amazon is the biggest retailer on the planet — with customers in 180 countries — and in its relentless bid to offer ever-faster delivery at ever-lower costs, it has built a national delivery system from the ground up. In under six years, Amazon has created a sprawling, decentralized network of thousands of vans operating in and around nearly every major metropolitan area in the country, dropping nearly 5
July 1, 2019
San Francisco: City of the rich and the destitute
Julia Carrie Wong writes: The tale of how tech destroyed the city that gave us the Summer of Love has been told so many times that in 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle produced a satirical cheat sheet for out-of-town reporters parachuting in for taste of avocado toast and class warfare. (Amid a bumper crop of new elegies to San Francisco in recent months, web publication HmmDaily updated the form with
June 24, 2019
What happens after Amazon’s domination is complete? Its bookstore offers clues
The New York Times reports: “The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy” is a medical handbook that recommends the right amount of the right drug for treating ailments from bacterial pneumonia to infected wounds. Lives depend on it. It is not the sort of book a doctor should puzzle over, wondering, “Is that a ‘1’ or a ‘7’ in the recommended dosage?” But that is exactly the possibility that has haunted
June 12, 2019
Google made $4.7 billion from the news industry in 2018, study says
The New York Times reports: $4,700,000,000. It’s more than the combined ticket sales of the last two “Avengers” movies. It’s more than what virtually any professional sports team is worth. And it’s the amount that Google made from the work of news publishers in 2018 via search and Google News, according to a study to be released on Monday by the News Media Alliance. The journalists who create that content
June 10, 2019
Bellingcat and how open source reinvented investigative journalism
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: It’s a brief window into a doomed soul. Clinging to his mother’s back, the child looks twice into the camera held by the man about to kill him. The natural curiosity of a child that fear has failed to extinguish. The smartphone captures the casual cruelty with which both mother and child are killed. Nearby, another mother and daughter are executed. One killer continues to pump
March 21, 2019
A new age of warfare: How Internet mercenaries do battle for authoritarian governments
The New York Times reports: The man in charge of Saudi Arabia’s ruthless campaign to stifle dissent went searching for ways to spy on people he saw as threats to the kingdom. He knew where to go: a secretive Israeli company offering technology developed by former intelligence operatives. It was late 2017 and Saud al-Qahtani — then a top adviser to Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince — was tracking Saudi
March 13, 2019
Without humans, AI can wreak havoc
Katherine Maher, chief executive and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, writes: Too often, artificial intelligence is presented as an all-powerful solution to our problems, a scalable replacement for people. Companies are automating nearly every aspect of their social interfaces, from creating to moderating to personalizing content. At its worst, A.I. can put society on autopilot that may not consider our dearest values. Without humans, A.I. can wreak havoc. A
February 26, 2019
U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms
The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free. The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber