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Category: Technology

America last: After 42 other countries put safety first, U.S. finally joins ban on flights of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

America last: After 42 other countries put safety first, U.S. finally joins ban on flights of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

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The New York Times reports: President Trump announced that the United States was grounding Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft, reversing an earlier decision by American regulators to keep the jets flying in the wake of a second deadly crash in Ethiopia. The Federal Aviation Administration had for days resisted calls to ground the plane even as safety regulators in some 42 countries had banned flights by the jets. As recently as Tuesday, the agency said it had seen “no systemic performance…

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U.S. pilots filed complaints about Boeing 737 Max 8 months before Ethiopia crash — manual ‘criminally insufficient’

U.S. pilots filed complaints about Boeing 737 Max 8 months before Ethiopia crash — manual ‘criminally insufficient’

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NBC News reports: Several American pilots submitted complaints about the Boeing 737 Max aircraft months before the same aircraft model crashed in Ethiopia on Sunday, killing 157 people. The complaints, first reported by the Dallas Morning News, were revealed as the Federal Aviation Administration doubled down on its decision to continue flying the Max 8 and Max 9 in the United States. At least five complaints about the Max 8 were made in October and November of 2018, and most…

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Trump’s defense secretary faces ethics complaint over Boeing promotion

Trump’s defense secretary faces ethics complaint over Boeing promotion

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Military Times reports: A government watchdog group has asked the Department of Defense Inspector General to investigate whether Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan violated ethics rules by promoting Boeing weapons systems while serving as a government official. Shanahan, 56, worked at Boeing for more than 30 years prior to being tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as deputy secretary of defense under former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. When Mattis submitted his resignation in December, Shanahan was named by…

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Ties between Trump and Boeing run deep

Ties between Trump and Boeing run deep

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Reuters reports: Trump has used Boeing products and sites as a backdrop for major announcements over the course of his presidency. In March 2018 he touted the impact of his tax overhaul bill as he visited a plant in St. Louis. Before joining the Pentagon, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who is expected to be named to the post, worked for 31 years at Boeing, where he was general manager for the 787 Dreamliner passenger jet. Boeing has nominated Nikki…

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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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Second Boeing 737 Max crash raises questions about airplane automation

Second Boeing 737 Max crash raises questions about airplane automation

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MIT Technology Review reports: The 737 Max has bigger engines than the original 737, which make it 14% more fuel efficient than the previous generation. As the trade publication Air Current explains, the position and shape of the new engines changed how the aircraft handles, giving the nose a tendency to tip upward in some situations, which could cause the plane to stall. The new “maneuvering characteristics augmentation system” was designed to counteract that tendency. Did these more efficient engines—and…

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A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be creative

A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be creative

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Sean Dorrance Kelly writes: Advances in artificial intelligence have led many to speculate that human beings will soon be replaced by machines in every domain, including that of creativity. Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, predicts that by 2029 we will have produced an AI that can pass for an average educated human being. Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, is more circumspect. He does not give a date but suggests that philosophers and mathematicians defer work on fundamental questions to “superintelligent” successors,…

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Technological change is not an inexorable, impersonal force

Technological change is not an inexorable, impersonal force

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Steven Poole writes: When is the future no longer the future? Only a decade ago, air travel seemed to be moving ineluctably towards giant planes, or “superjumbos”. But last week Airbus announced it will cease manufacturing its A380, the world’s fattest passenger jet, as current trends favour smaller and more fuel-efficient craft. Progress changed course. A more vivid reminder of lost dreams will come in a few weeks: 2 March marks the 50th anniversary of the maiden flight of Concorde….

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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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Screen time has stunted the development of generations of children

Screen time has stunted the development of generations of children

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The Guardian reports: A study has linked high levels of screen time with delayed development in children, reigniting the row over the extent to which parents should limit how long their offspring spend with electronic devices. Researchers in Canada say children who spent more time with screens at two years of age did worse on tests of development at age three than children who had spent little time with devices. A similar result was found when children’s screen time at…

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The age of surveillance capitalism

The age of surveillance capitalism

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John Naughton writes: We’re living through the most profound transformation in our information environment since Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing in circa 1439. And the problem with living through a revolution is that it’s impossible to take the long view of what’s happening. Hindsight is the only exact science in this business, and in that long run we’re all dead. Printing shaped and transformed societies over the next four centuries, but nobody in Mainz (Gutenberg’s home town) in, say, 1495…

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Disruption for thee, but not for me

Disruption for thee, but not for me

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Cory Doctorow writes: The Silicon Valley gospel of “disruption” has descended into caricature, but, at its core, there are some sound tactics buried beneath the self-serving bullshit. A lot of our systems and institutions are corrupt, bloated, and infested with cream-skimming rentiers who add nothing and take so much. Take taxis: there is nothing good about the idea that cab drivers and cab passengers meet each other by random chance, with the drivers aimlessly circling traffic-clogged roads while passengers brave…

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Why China’s electric-car industry is leaving Detroit, Japan, and Germany in the dust

Why China’s electric-car industry is leaving Detroit, Japan, and Germany in the dust

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Jordyn Dahl writes: After the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s crippled China’s economy, the country began to open its markets to the outside world. The aim was to bring in technological know-how from abroad that domestic firms could then assimilate. By the early ’80s, foreign automakers were allowed in on the condition that they form a joint venture with a Chinese partner. These Chinese firms, by working with foreign companies, would eventually gain enough knowledge to function independently….

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Yuval Noah Harari sees a big-data threat to humanity

Yuval Noah Harari sees a big-data threat to humanity

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Steve Paulson interviews historian Yuval Noah Harari: What’s different about this moment in history? What’s different is the pace of technological change, especially the twin revolutions of artificial intelligence and bioengineering. They make it possible to hack human beings and other organisms, and then re-engineer them and create new life forms. How far can this technology go in changing who we are? Very far. Beyond our imagination. It can change our imagination, too. If your imagination is too limited to…

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