from NYTs The Labor Department weighed in Monday on a question whose answer could be worth billions of dollars to gig-economy companies, deciding that one company’s workers were contractors, not employees. As a result, the unidentified company — whose workers, it appears, clean residences — will not have to offer the federal minimum wage or […]
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How To Be An Expert
from Forbes What is the value of an expert? In an age where information is free and available (without even typing—thank you Alexa), logic would seem to indicate a reduction in value. If information is free, how does the “expert” survive? And yet, in this unique moment in history, we see an overall rise of […]
Google Knows Everywhere You Go — Here’s How To Stop It From Tracking You And Delete The Logs
from CNBC Google knows a lot about you and, if you use Google Maps or other Google apps, it stores a copy of everywhere you go. I recently performed Google’s “Privacy Checkup” to learn a bit more about what it knows about me, and was pretty surprised at the level of detail it had on […]
Facebook’s Role in Brexit
from TED In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalladr digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK’s super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Tracking the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters — and linking the same players and tactics to […]
Can Humans Help Trees Outrun Climate Change?
from NYTs Foresters began noticing the patches of dying pines and denuded oaks, and grew concerned. Warmer winters and drier summers had sent invasive insects and diseases marching northward, killing the trees. If the dieback continued, some woodlands could become shrub land. Most trees can migrate only as fast as their seeds disperse — and […]
A Seat At The Table
from Seth’s Blog Short-term profits are a lousy way to build a sustainable community. There’s always a shortcut, a rule to be bent, a way to make some more money now at the expense of the people around us. The counterbalance to selfish Ayn-Randian greed is cultural belonging. “No,” the community says, “we’re not proud […]
Password1, Password2, Password3 No More: Microsoft Drops Password Expiration Rec
from ars technica For many years, Microsoft has published a security baseline configuration: a set of system policies that are a reasonable default for a typical organization. This configuration may be sufficient for some companies, and it represents a good starting point for those corporations that need something stricter. While most of the settings have […]
The Only Way To Rein In Big Tech Is To Treat Them As A Public Service
from The Guardian After years of praising their virtues, governments across the world are belatedly waking up to the problems posed by big tech. From India and Australia to France and America – and now the UK, with its report from the Digital Competition Expert Panel – politicians have been reckoning with how to mitigate […]
How Amazon Automatically Tracks And Fires Warehouse Workers For ‘Productivity’
from The Verge Amazon’s fulfillment centers are the engine of the company — massive warehouses where workers track, pack, sort, and shuffle each order before sending it on its way to the buyer’s door. Critics say those fulfillment center workers face strenuous conditions: workers are pressed to “make rate,” with some packing hundreds of boxes […]
15 Months Of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook
from Wired THE STREETS OF Davos, Switzerland, were iced over on the night of January 25, 2018, which added a slight element of danger to the prospect of trekking to the Hotel Seehof for George Soros’ annual banquet. The aged financier has a tradition of hosting a dinner at the World Economic Forum, where he […]
Who’s at Fault? Read the Fine Print to Make Sure You’re Not at Risk
from NYTs If the old printer at his golf club had not been replaced, Ray Mantle probably would not have realized that he and his friends had been signing a liability waiver that could expose them to expensive litigation and damages. Mr. Mantle, a retired New York lawyer whose specialty was intellectual property, said he […]
How to Scan Your Airbnb for Hidden Cameras
from Slate Over the weekend, news outlets reported that a New Zealand man named Andrew Barker had found a camera, hidden in a smoke detector, in his Airbnb that was livestreaming a feed of the living room. Barker was in Cork, Ireland, on a 14-month trip around Europe with his family when they checked into […]
What’s The Purpose Of College?
from Forbes Many Americans have begun to ask whether college is worth it. And who’s to blame them? With college tuition rising at astronomical levels, it’s reasonable to think prospective consumers will do a more careful “return on investment” calculation. But instead of asking whether it’s worth it, we’d be better off asking a different […]
The Privacy Project
from NYTs Companies and governments are gaining new powers to follow people across the internet and around the world, and even to peer into their genomes. The benefits of such advances have been apparent for years; the costs — in anonymity, even autonomy — are now becoming clearer. The boundaries of privacy are in dispute, […]
‘Retail Apocalypse’ Now: Analysts Say 75,000 More U.S. Stores Could Be Doomed.
from WaPo Widespread closures have roiled the retail industry, but many more stores are likely to shut down in coming years to keep up with a shift to online shopping, according to a report by investment firm UBS. An estimated 75,000 stores that sell clothing, electronics and furniture will close by 2026, when online shopping […]