The ever-useful Gartner Hype Cycle identified an inflection point in the life of any new technology: the "Peak of Inflated Expectations," attained just before the sharp dropoff into the "Trough… Read the rest of the article: Babysitter vetting and voice-analysis: Have we reached peak AI snakeoil?
China's war on jaywalking went to the next level last spring when AI-based facial recognition systems were integrated into some crosswalks, to punish jaywalkers by squirting them with water, sending… Read the rest of the article: Chinese AI traffic cam mistook a bus ad for a human and publicly shamed the CEO it depicted for jaywalking
The writers of New York Magazine's Strategist tested "dozens upon dozens of gels, rollerballs, felt-tips, ballpoints, and fountain pens" and published a ranked list of the top 100 pens in… Read the rest of the article: The winners in a massive roundup of the 100 Best Pens are surprisingly affordable
China-watchers observed the rise-and-rise of Chinese premier Xi Jinping with caution and sometimes alarm, but also held out some hope that despite his authoritarian tendencies and thin skin, Xi was… Read the rest of the article: Using data-science to evaluate whether Xi Jinping's anti-corruption sweeps were really about consolidating power
The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.
In a stirring unsigned editorial, the New Scientist calls the scholarly publishing industry "indefensible," noting that the business of publishing tax-funded research and then selling it to tax-funded institutions has… Read the rest of the article: New Scientist calls for the end of the scholarly publishing industry: "more profitable than oil," "indefensible"
Ted Kramer is CEO and co-founder of Six4Three, a creepy US-based machine-learning startup whose debut product was a Facebook app called Pinkini that let you search your friends' photos for… Read the rest of the article: British Parliament seizes internal Facebook documents by threatening to jail a rival exec
When Josh Hawley was Attorney General of Missouri, he was an (extremely selective) firebreathing trustbuster who used his office to chase Google up and down the state, investigating the company's… Read the rest of the article: Missouri's latest senator is part of a wave of (extremely selective) Republican enthusiasm for trustbusting
Taylor Swift's latest record deal contained a clause in which Universal finally committed to sharing any gains from a future sale of Spotify (which the company invested in along with… Read the rest of the article: Taylor Swift makes a payout to all Universal artists a clause in her new record deal
Bill Shine was forced to resign as co-president of Fox News over his personal mishandling of the rampant culture of sexual abuse, in which he abetted the company's culture of… Read the rest of the article: While serving, Trump's comms director will get a $7M Fox News bonus for his mishandling of sexual abuse
When the New York Times published its insider report detailing how Facebook executives had hired the Republic PR firm Definers, known for it dirty tricks campaigns, and then directed it… Read the rest of the article: On Thanksgiving Eve, Facebook quietly admitted to hiring dirty tricksters to publish an anti-Semitic Soros hoax smearing its critics
Sleep apnea is a fast-growing health complaint among Americans, and that has triggered a set of deceptive and unethical measures by US health insurers to shift the cost of using… Read the rest of the article: Insurance companies gouge on CPAP machines and consumables, use wireless modems to spy on your usage
China's "invisible poor" are poor people who successfully project a facade of affluence through consumer goods, clothing, etc: a research report from Shanghai's MobData found that Iphone ownership is strongly… Read the rest of the article: Chinese Iphone ownership is a marker of membership in the "invisible poor"
Squared (AKA Gaby) is a French hacker who created edex-ui, a science-fiction inspired desktop "heavily inspired from DEX-UI and the TRON Legacy movie effects," which gives you a terminal and… Read the rest of the article: A science-fiction-inspired desktop UI for your Lin/Win/Mac system
Wanna see how an insurgent, anti-establishment candidate can use snark, personality, and a combative spirit to advance the political dialog? Stop following Cheeto Hitler and start following the youngest Congresswoman… Read the rest of the article: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter is the ultimate antidote to Donald Trump's Twitter
Jesse Hirsh the CBC Toronto's longstanding and deservedly respected tech columnist, a fixture for many words, interpreting the tech news of the day for the public broadcaster's nonexpert audience, explaining… Read the rest of the article: CBC's longstanding tech columnist condemns the broadcaster's cozy relationship with Facebook
After Property of the People (previously) used clever Freedom of Information Act requests to learn that the FBI classed the Proud Boys as 'an Extremist Group with Ties to White… Read the rest of the article: Freedom of Information Access ninjas force Gavin McInnis out of the Proud Boys
The EU wants to punish Google for allegedly underpaying artists for the use of their works on YouTube, and so they're proposing copyright filters that block anything that appears in… Read the rest of the article: Let's get artists paid by making Big Tech pay them, not by creating EU copyright filters
Yes, Trump is a pathological liar, but he's also the first US president to call Ted Cruz a liar, the first to admit that the Saudis were likely behind 9/11,… Read the rest of the article: In a weird way, Donald Trump is the most honest American president in history
In The State of 4G Pricing, Finnish researchers Rewheel identify the US as having some of the most expensive wireless data (fifth highest prices) in the world, and they predict… Read the rest of the article: Americans pay some of the highest prices for wireless data in the world, and it's going to get worse
