In 2011, DTE Energy Company removed 1,200 streetlights from the city of Highland Park, Michigan. A Black working-class suburb of Detroit that was once a boom town for the automotive industry, Highland Park was on the verge of bankruptcy. Unable to pay DTE the $4 million it was owed, the city went dark. The streetlights
“As a result of this elaborate scheme, the defendant falsified billions of ad views and caused businesses to pay more than $7 million for ads that were never actually viewed by real human internet users,” the Department of Justice said. Although The New York Times was named as a “victim” by the Justice Department, the
That project is now personified by today’s announcement of Halo Rise, the $140 “no-contact bedside sleep tracker, smart alarm and wake-up light” that picks up signals from your bedroom that even the partner sleeping beside you won’t notice. (To get the best use of that data to improve sleep, users must subscribe to the premium
In July, the Google executive who oversees the company’s lucrative and dominant search engine made a surprising admission. Younger users were diverting questions that would once have naturally flowed to the iconic search box to social networks, Prabhakar Raghavan said at a Forbes conference. Take the example of where to go for lunch: Google’s studies
The same approach to teaching Astro with gestures and words could in the future be extended to all kinds of furniture and objects in a home, Washington says. The underlying AI technology could also help the robot make sense of what people are doing. “Artificial intelligence has reached this amazing inflection point,” he says. “It’s
Telegram did not respond to a request fof comment. Telegram was used heavily by organizers of the January 6 riot in the US. The platform is unmoderated, with small exceptions for pornographic and terrorist content, making it a hub for conspiracy theories and disinformation that may otherwise be removed from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and
August 5 was not a normal day for Kaicheng Yang. It was the day after a US court published Elon Musk’s argument on why he should no longer have to buy Twitter. And Yang, a PhD student at Indiana University, was shocked to discover that his bot detection software was at the center of a
In November 2021, Tord Lundström, the technical director at Swedish digital forensics nonprofit Qurium Media, noticed something strange. A massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was targeting Bulatlat, an alternative Phillippine media outlet hosted by the nonprofit. And it was coming from Facebook users. Lundström and his team found that the attack was just
GL: You’ve written a lot about governance, and I’m interested in the potential uses of blockchains for governments and societies. What is the potential of using decentralized systems like Ethereum for running decisionmaking on social issues, and not necessarily crypto-related issues? I think blockchains can be a good technical infrastructure for running a lot of
But bots don’t even need to be useful. “I don’t think bots have to do something worthwhile,” says V Buckenham, founder of Cheap Bots, Done Quick!, a free tool that helps people create automated Twitter accounts. Tens of thousands of bots have been developed using the platform, most of which Buckenham says aren’t useful. “It’s
During a heavily watched Twitch stream on September 18, UK-based creator Sliker delivered a tearful admission to his audience. “It’s time for the truth,” he said between sobs. “I lied to many people … I borrowed money off people.” He’d pried, he confessed, at least $200,000 from fellow streamers and fans, a move he claimed
Hi, everyone. Glad to hear from Joe Biden that the pandemic is over. But who’s going to tell the coronavirus? The Plain View The linguist George Lakoff is famous for his theory of “framing” in political speech. The words people use to describe an issue can end a debate even before the speechifying begins. “Framing
Some children could adapt better without them than others. Throughout his career in education, Pederson has never heard a single parent complain about data protection. But after the Google ban, he did receive complaints—mostly from parents of dyslexic students, who rely on Chromebook tools such as AppWriter. There might be ambivalence among many Danish parents—but
When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, many technology companies assured employees that they would help those who needed to travel to another state to access abortion care. But at some companies, one major segment of their workforces remained shut out: gig workers. Today, a group of 25 Democratic members of
The Rise of the Rest investments you extoll certainly benefited from that exuberance—and now may suffer. Some Silicon Valley venture capitalists who were focused on rising cities might pull back. But most will realize it’s crazy that 75 percent of venture capital has gone to just three states over the last decade. In the next
Are there areas where you think there can be more collaboration among regulators? We work very closely with our US counterparts, both the DOJ and the FTC. If we start a competition case, and we know US colleagues are looking at the same things, we ask the companies, would you allow us to exchange information
In 2020, California voters approved Proposition 22, a law that app-based companies including Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash said would improve worker conditions while keeping rides and deliveries cheap and abundant for consumers. But a report published today suggests that rideshare drivers in the state have instead seen their effective hourly wage decline compared to what
Image generators like Stable Diffusion can create what look like real photographs or hand-crafted illustrations depicting just about anything a person can imagine. This is possible thanks to algorithms that learn to associate the properties of a vast collection of images taken from the web and image databases with their associated text labels. Algorithms learn
And when you factor in a van’s price, the cost of fuel, insurance, and depreciation, plus parking fines and congestion charges, the cost-effectiveness calculation swings even further in cargo bikes’ favor—so there would also appear to be an economic incentive for companies to make the switch. This, though, is where it becomes tricky. A traditional
Burmese influencer Han Nyein Oo rose to prominence in 2020, posting memes and gossip about Burmese celebrities on Facebook to an audience that grew to several hundred thousand people in Myanmar by early 2021. Then, after the country’s military seized power that February, he lurched rightwards, becoming a full-blooded supporter of the junta, which has
The situation is somewhat different with postboxes. There are 115,000 of them around the UK and most carry the queen’s cipher, though there are still some that feature the ciphers of previous monarchs, including Victoria. A few hundred new postboxes are installed every year, says Gold, and it is only on new ones that Charles
YouTube says its systems are working as they’re meant to. “Mozilla’s report doesn’t take into account how our systems actually work, and therefore it’s difficult for us to glean many insights,” says YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez, who added that viewers are given control over their recommendations. This includes “the ability to block a video or
But utilities will likely play the biggest role in ushering in a new era of electricity grids, says Max Baumhefner, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. One easy way they can encourage EV drivers help the grid is by offering “time-of-use” rates, which make it cheaper for owners to charge at times
Hi, everybody. Elizabeth is mourned, Ukraine is battling back, and new Covid vaccines are here. But this week will be remembered for the Merge, making crypto more useful and maybe advancing it beyond the con-game era. The Plain View Neal Stephenson invented the metaverse. At least from an imagination standpoint. Though other science fiction writers
When a California pollution regulator voted last month to approve a rule banning new gas-powered car sales in the state by 2035, its officials were hailed as climate heroes. With good reason too: The move will reduce emissions by nearly 400 million metric tons between 2026 and 2040, the state calculates, preventing an estimated 1,300
In the early hours of Thursday morning, major US freight railroad companies reached a tentative agreement with unions, narrowly averting a nationwide rail shutdown less than 24 hours before a strike deadline. A work stoppage would have heaped devastating consequences on the nation’s economy and supply chain, nearly 30 percent of which relies on rail.
Almost 10 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain has been affected by the Russian invasion, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery. One in six of Ukraine’s grain storage facilities— which have a total capacity of 58 million metric tons—have been impacted by the conflict, either through damage, destruction, or falling under Russia’s control.
Many of Silicon Valley’s fiercest watchdogs on Capitol Hill are now snarling. Yesterday’s arresting testimony by Twitter’s former security chief, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, has lawmakers in both parties redoubling their efforts to reign in the tech titans. Zatko’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee follows a detailed report he submitted to the US Department of
It’s two weeks to RE:WIRED Green, our event on climate change and the power of human ingenuity to tackle it. We’ve got speakers on food tech and food waste, de-extinction, glaciology, intergenerational activism, right-to-repair, community agriculture, nuclear energy, and more—among them ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, restaurateur Kayla Abe, paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara, and cultured-meat pioneer Isha
Initial contact is just the start. Beyond this—once Whistleblower Aid has signed on clients—it recommends using Signal for most messaging. “A lot of time is spent trying to keep our secure devices secure,” Tye says. Not all whistleblowing is the same, and every whistleblower has their own set of risks. Someone who is calling out