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Category: Internet

San Francisco: City of the rich and the destitute

San Francisco: City of the rich and the destitute

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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 an “AI Algorithm-generated” version.) But what’s striking about the current…

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What happens after Amazon’s domination is complete? Its bookstore offers clues

What happens after Amazon’s domination is complete? Its bookstore offers clues

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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 the guide’s publisher, Antimicrobial Therapy, for the past two years…

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Google made $4.7 billion from the news industry in 2018, study says

Google made $4.7 billion from the news industry in 2018, study says

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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 deserve a cut of that $4.7 billion, said David Chavern,…

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Bellingcat and how open source reinvented investigative journalism

Bellingcat and how open source reinvented investigative journalism

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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 bullets into the lifeless bodies with a glee that seems…

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How an aging, digitally semi-literate population is reshaping the internet and politics

How an aging, digitally semi-literate population is reshaping the internet and politics

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BuzzFeed reports: Although many older Americans have, like the rest of us, embraced the tools and playthings of the technology industry, a growing body of research shows they have disproportionately fallen prey to the dangers of internet misinformation and risk being further polarized by their online habits. While that matters much to them, it’s also a massive challenge for society given the outsize role older generations play in civic life, and demographic changes that are increasing their power and influence….

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A new age of warfare: How Internet mercenaries do battle for authoritarian governments

A new age of warfare: How Internet mercenaries do battle for authoritarian governments

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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 dissidents around the world, part of his extensive surveillance efforts…

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How social media’s business model helped the New Zealand massacre go viral

How social media’s business model helped the New Zealand massacre go viral

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The Washington Post reports: The ability of Internet users to spread a video of Friday’s slaughter in New Zealand marked a triumph — however appalling — of human ingenuity over computerized systems designed to block troubling images of violence and hate. People celebrating the mosque attacks that left 50 people dead were able to keep posting and reposting videos on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter despite the websites’ use of largely automated systems powered by artificial intelligence to block them. Clips…

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Companies use your data to make money. California thinks you should get paid

Companies use your data to make money. California thinks you should get paid

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CNN reported in February: People give massive amounts of their personal data to companies for free every day. Some economists, academics and activists think they should be paid for their contributions. Called data dividends, or sometimes digital or technology dividends, the somewhat obscure idea got a boost on Feb 12 from an unexpected source: California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom. “California’s consumers should … be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data. And so I’ve asked…

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Without humans, AI can wreak havoc

Without humans, AI can wreak havoc

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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 glaring example was Amazon’s A.I.-driven human resources software that was…

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U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms

U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms

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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 campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with…

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AI that writes convincing prose risks mass-producing fake news

AI that writes convincing prose risks mass-producing fake news

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MIT Technology Review reports: Here’s some breaking fake news … Russia has declared war on the United States after Donald Trump accidentally fired a missile in the air. Russia said it had “identified the missile’s trajectory and will take necessary measures to ensure the security of the Russian population and the country’s strategic nuclear forces.” The White House said it was “extremely concerned by the Russian violation” of a treaty banning intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The US and Russia have had…

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Targeted advertising is ruining the internet and breaking the world

Targeted advertising is ruining the internet and breaking the world

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Nathalie Maréchal writes: In his testimony to the US Senate last spring, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that his company doesn’t sell user data, as if to reassure policymakers and the public. But the reality—that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other social media companies sell access to our attention—is just as concerning. Actual user information may not change hands, but the advertising business model drives company decision making in ways that are ultimately toxic to society. As sociologist Zeynep Tufekci put…

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U.S. joins Russia, North Korea in refusing to sign cybersecurity pact

U.S. joins Russia, North Korea in refusing to sign cybersecurity pact

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Caroline Orr reports: More than 50 countries signed onto a historic cybersecurity pact Monday as part of the Paris Peace Forum, marking an important step forward in the global fight against cyberwarfare and criminal activity on the internet. In addition to the governments that pledged to work together to combat malicious online activities, at least 150 tech companies and 90 charitable organizations and universities also signed onto the agreement. However, there were a few notable absences from the list of…

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Bitcoin: Are we really going to burn up the world for libertarian nerdbucks?

Bitcoin: Are we really going to burn up the world for libertarian nerdbucks?

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Eric Holthaus writes: The continued growth of power-hungry Bitcoin could lock in catastrophic climate change, according to a new study. The cryptocurrency’s growth, should it follow the adoption path of other widely used technologies (like credit cards and air conditioning), would alone be enough to push the planet to 2-degree C warming, the red line value the world agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord. Bitcoin essentially converts electricity into cash, via incredibly complex math problems designed to eliminate…

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Tim Berners-Lee launches campaign to save the web from abuse

Tim Berners-Lee launches campaign to save the web from abuse

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The Guardian reports: Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world. In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to protect people’s rights and freedoms on the internet. The contract outlines central…

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Dramatic slowdown in global growth of internet access will amplify existing inequalities

Dramatic slowdown in global growth of internet access will amplify existing inequalities

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The Guardian reports: The growth of internet access around the world has slowed dramatically, according to new data, suggesting the digital revolution will remain a distant dream for billions of the poorest and most isolated people on the planet. The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities…

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