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how-your-sensitive-data-can-be-sold-after-a-data-broker-goes-bankrupt

How your sensitive data can be sold after a data broker goes bankrupt

data brokers, Policy, privacy, syndication / /

playing fast and loose —

Sensitive location data could be sold off to the highest bidder.

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Blue tone city scape and network connection concept , Map pin business district

In 2021, a company specializing in collecting and selling location data called Near bragged that it was “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Last year the company went public with a valuation of $1 billion (via a SPAC). Seven months later it filed for bankruptcy and has agreed to sell the company.

But for the “1.6B people” that Near said its data represents, the important question is: What happens to Near’s mountain of location data? Any company could gain access to it through purchasing the company’s assets.

The prospect of this data, including Near’s collection of location data from sensitive locations such as abortion clinics, being sold off in bankruptcy has raised alarms in Congress. Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging the agency to “protect consumers and investors from the outrageous conduct” of Near, citing his office’s investigation into the India-based company.

Wyden’s letter also urged the FTC “to intervene in Near’s bankruptcy proceedings to ensure that all location and device data held by Near about Americans is promptly destroyed and is not sold off, including to another data broker.” The FTC took such an action in 2010 to block the use of 11 years worth of subscriber personal data during the bankruptcy proceedings of the XY Magazine, which was oriented to young gay men. The agency requested that the data be destroyed to prevent its misuse.

Wyden’s investigation was spurred by a May 2023 Wall Street Journal report that Near had licensed location data to the anti-abortion group Veritas Society so it could target ads to visitors of Planned Parenthood clinics and attempt to dissuade women from seeking abortions. Wyden’s investigation revealed that the group’s geofencing campaign focused on 600 Planned Parenthood clinics in 48 states. The Journal also revealed that Near had been selling its location data to the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies.

As of publication, Near has not responded to requests for comment.

According to Near’s privacy policy, all of the data they have collected can be transferred to the new owners. Under the heading of “Who do you share my personal data with?” It lists “Prospective buyers of our business.”

This type of clause is common in privacy policies, and is a regular part of businesses being bought and sold. Where it gets complicated is when the company being sold owns data containing sensitive information.

This week, a new bankruptcy court filing showed that Wyden’s requests were granted. The order placed restrictions on the use, sale, licensing, or transfer of location data collected from sensitive locations in the US and requires any company that purchases the data to establish a “sensitive location data program” with detailed policies for such data and ensure ongoing monitoring and compliance, including the creation of a list of sensitive locations such as reproductive health care facilities, doctor’s offices, houses of worship, mental health care providers, corrections facilities and shelters among others. The order demands that unless consumers have explicitly provided consent, the company must cease any collection, use, or transfer of location data.

In a statement emailed to The Markup, Wyden wrote, “I commend the FTC for stepping in—at my request—to ensure that this data broker’s stockpile of Americans’ sensitive location data isn’t abused, again.”

Wyden called for protecting sensitive location data from data brokers, citing the new legal threats to women since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn the abortion-rights ruling Roe v. Wade. Wyden wrote, “The threat posed by the sale of location data is clear, particularly to women who are seeking reproductive care.”

The bankruptcy order also provided a rare glimpse into how data brokers license data to one another. Near’s list of contracts included agreements with several location brokers, ad platforms, universities, retailers, and city governments.

It is not clear from the filing if the agreements covered Near data being licensed, Near licensing the data from the companies, or both.

This article was originally published on The Markup and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Yelp: It’s gotten worse since Google made changes to comply with EU rules

dma, EU, Google, Policy, search, syndication, Yelp / /
illustration of google and yelp logos

Anjali Nair; Getty Images

To comply with looming rules that ban tech giants from favoring their own services, Google has been testing new look search results for flights, trains, hotels, restaurants, and products in Europe. The EU’s Digital Markets Act is supposed to help smaller companies get more traffic from Google, but reviews service Yelp says that when it tested Google’s design tweaks with consumers it had the opposite effect—making people less likely to click through to Yelp or another Google competitor.

The results, which Yelp shared with European regulators in December and WIRED this month, put some numerical backing behind complaints from Google rivals in travel, shopping, and hospitality that its efforts to comply with the DMA are insufficient—and potentially more harmful than the status quo. Yelp and thousands of others have been demanding that the EU hold a firm line against the giant companies including Apple and Amazon that are subject to what’s widely considered the world’s strictest antitrust law, violations of which can draw fines of up to 10 percent of global annual sales.

“All the gatekeepers are trying to hold on as long as possible to the status quo and make the new world unattractive,” says Richard Stables, CEO of shopping comparison site Kelkoo, which is unhappy with how Google has tweaked shopping results to comply with the DMA. “That’s really the game plan.”

Google spokesperson Rory O’Donoghue says the more than 20 changes made to search in response to the DMA are providing more opportunities for services such as Yelp to show up in results. “To suggest otherwise is plain wrong,” he says. Overall, Google’s tests of various DMA-inspired designs show clicks to review and comparison websites are up, O’Donoghue says—at the cost of users losing shortcuts to Google tools and individual businesses like airlines and restaurants facing a drop in visits from Google search. “We’ve been seeking feedback from a range of stakeholders over many months as we try to balance the needs of different types of websites while complying with the law,” he says.

Google, which generates 30 percent of its sales from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, views the DMA as disrespecting its expertise in what users want. Critics such as Yelp argue that Google sometimes siphons users away from the more reliable content they offer. Yelp competes with Google for advertisers but generated less than 1 percent of its record sales of $1.3 billion last year from outside the US. An increase in European traffic could significantly boost its business.

To study search changes, Yelp worked with user-research company Lyssna to watch how hundreds of consumers from around the world interacted with Google’s new EU search results page when asked to find a dinner spot in Paris. For searches like that or for other “local” businesses, as Google calls them, one new design features results from Google Maps data at the top of the page below the search bar but adds a new box widget lower down containing images from and links to reviews websites like Yelp.

The experiments found that about 73 percent of about 500 people using that new design clicked results that kept them inside Google’s ecosystem—an increase over the 55 percent who did so when the design Google is phasing out in Europe was tested with a smaller pool of roughly 250 people.

Yelp also tested a variation of the new design. In this version, which Google has shared with regulators, the new box featuring review websites is placed above the maps widget. It was more successful in drawing people to try alternatives to Google, with only about 44 percent of consumers in the experiment sticking with the search giant. Though the box and widget will be treated equally by Google’s search algorithms, the order the features appear in will vary based on those calculations. Yelp’s concern is that Google will win out too often.

Yelp proposed to EU regulators that to produce more fair outcomes, Google should instead amend the map widget on results pages to include business listings and ratings from numerous providers, placing data from Google’s directory right alongside Yelp and others.

Companies such as Yelp that are critical of the changes in testing have called on the European Commission to immediately open an investigation into Google on March 7, when enforcement of the DMA begins.

“Yelp urges regulators to compel Google to fully comply with both the letter and spirit of the DMA,” says Yelp’s vice president of public policy, David Segal. “Google will soon be in violation of both, because if you look at what Google has put forth, it’s pretty clear that its services still have the best real estate.”

Yelp: It’s gotten worse since Google made changes to comply with EU rules Read More »

report:-apple-is-about-to-be-fined-e500-million-by-the-eu-over-music-streaming

Report: Apple is about to be fined €500 million by the EU over music streaming

antitrust, Apple, Apple Music, EU, Policy, Spotify, streaming, syndication / /

Competition concerns —

EC accuses Apple of abusing its market position after complaint by Spotify.

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Report: Apple is about to be fined €500 million by the EU over music streaming

Brussels is to impose its first-ever fine on tech giant Apple for allegedly breaking EU law over access to its music streaming services, according to five people with direct knowledge of the long-running investigation.

The fine, which is in the region of €500 million and is expected to be announced early next month, is the culmination of a European Commission antitrust probe into whether Apple has used its own platform to favor its services over those of competitors.

The probe is investigating whether Apple blocked apps from informing iPhone users of cheaper alternatives to access music subscriptions outside the App Store. It was launched after music-streaming app Spotify made a formal complaint to regulators in 2019.

The Commission will say Apple’s actions are illegal and go against the bloc’s rules that enforce competition in the single market, the people familiar with the case told the Financial Times. It will ban Apple’s practice of blocking music services from letting users outside its App Store switch to cheaper alternatives.

Brussels will accuse Apple of abusing its powerful position and imposing anti-competitive trading practices on rivals, the people said, adding that the EU would say the tech giant’s terms were “unfair trading conditions.”

It is one of the most significant financial penalties levied by the EU on Big Tech companies. A series of fines against Google levied over several years and amounting to about 8 billion euros are being contested in court.

Apple has never previously been fined for antitrust infringements by Brussels, but the company was hit in 2020 with a 1.1 billion-euro fine in France for alleged anti-competitive behavior. The penalty was revised down to 372 million euros after an appeal.

The EU’s action against Apple will reignite the war between Brussels and Big Tech at a time when companies are being forced to show how they are complying with landmark new rules aimed at opening competition and allowing small tech rivals to thrive.

Companies that are defined as gatekeepers, including Apple, Amazon, and Google, need to fully comply with these rules under the Digital Markets Act by early next month.

The act requires these tech giants to comply with more stringent rules and will force them to allow rivals to share information about their services.

There are concerns that the rules are not enabling competition as fast as some had hoped, although Brussels has insisted that changes require time.

Brussels formally charged Apple in the anti-competitive probe in 2021. The commission narrowed the scope of the investigation last year and abandoned a charge of pushing developers to use its own in-app payment system.

Apple last month announced changes to its iOS mobile software, App Store, and Safari browser in efforts to appease Brussels after long resisting such steps. But Spotify said at the time that Apple’s compliance was a “complete and total farce.”

Apple responded by saying that “the changes we’re sharing for apps in the European Union give developers choice—with new options to distribute iOS apps and process payments.”

In a separate antitrust case, Brussels is consulting with Apple’s rivals over the tech giant’s concessions to appease worries that it is blocking financial groups from its Apple Pay mobile system.

The timing of the Commission’s announcement has not yet been fixed, but it will not change the direction of the antitrust investigation, the people with knowledge of the situation said.

Apple, which can appeal to the EU courts, declined to comment on the forthcoming ruling but pointed to a statement a year ago when it said it was “pleased” the Commission had narrowed the charges and said it would address concerns while promoting competition.

It added: “The App Store has helped Spotify become the top music streaming service across Europe and we hope the European Commission will end its pursuit of a complaint that has no merit.”

The Commission—the executive body of the EU—declined to comment.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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flowers-grown-floating-on-polluted-waterways-can-help-clean-up-nutrient-runoff

Flowers grown floating on polluted waterways can help clean up nutrient runoff

flowers, Science, syndication / /

here’s hoping it also masks the runoff smell —

Cut-flower farms could be a sustainable option for mitigating water pollution.

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Hands cutting yellow flowers with scissors

Enlarge / The cut flowers could pay for themselves and even turn a profit.

Flowers grown on inexpensive floating platforms can help clean polluted waterways, over 12 weeks extracting 52 percent more phosphorus and 36 percent more nitrogen than the natural nitrogen cycle removes from untreated water, according to our new research. In addition to filtering water, the cut flowers can generate income via the multibillion-dollar floral market.

In our trials of various flowers, giant marigolds stood out as the most successful, producing long, marketable stems and large blooms. Their yield matched typical flower farm production.

Why it matters

Water pollution is caused in large part by runoff from farms, urban lawns, and even septic tanks. When it rains, excess phosphorus, nitrogen, and other chemicals wash into lakes and rivers.

These nutrients feed algae, leading to widespread and harmful algae blooms, which can severely lower oxygen in water, creating “dead zones” where aquatic life cannot survive. Nutrient runoff is a critical issue as urban areas expand, affecting the health of water ecosystems.

Water pollution is an escalating crisis in our area of Miami-Dade and Broward counties in Florida. The 2020 Biscayne Bay fish kill, the largest mass death of aquatic life on record for the region, serves as a stark reminder of this growing environmental issue.

How we do our work

We study sustainable agriculture and water pollution in South Florida.

Inspired by traditional floating farm practices, including the Aztecs’ chinampas in Mexico and the Miccosukees’ tree island settlements in Florida, we tested the idea of growing cut flowers on floating rafts as a way to remove excess nutrients from waterways. Our hope was not only that the flowers would pay for themselves, but that they could provide jobs here in Miami, the center of the US cut-flower trade.

Chemical conditions in the test tanks were the same as in nearby polluted waterways.

Enlarge / Chemical conditions in the test tanks were the same as in nearby polluted waterways.

We floated 4-by-6-foot (1.2-by-1.8-meter) mats of inexpensive polyethylene foam called Beemats in 620-gallon (2,300-liter) outdoor test tanks that mirrored water conditions of nearby polluted waterways. Into the mats, we transplanted flower seedlings, including zinnias, sunflowers, and giant marigolds. The polluted tank water was rich in nutrients, eliminating the need for any fertilizer. As the seedlings matured into plants over 12 weeks, we tracked the tanks’ improving water quality.

Encouraged by the success of the marigolds in our tanks, we moved our trials to the nearby canals of Coral Gables and Little River. We anchored the floating platforms with 50-pound (22.7-kilogram) weights and also tied them to shore for extra stability. No alterations to the landscape were needed, making the process simple and doable.

Some plants grow roots in places–such as the stem–other than where their original roots began.

Enlarge / Some plants grow roots in places–such as the stem–other than where their original roots began.

What still isn’t known

The success of the giant marigolds might be linked to the extra roots that grow from their stems known as adventitious roots. These roots likely help keep the plants stable on the floating platforms. Identifying additional plants with roots like these could help broaden plant choices.

Future raft designs may also need modifications to ensure better stability and growth for other cut-flower and crop species.

What’s next

Our promising findings show floating cut-flower farms could be a sustainable option for mitigating water pollution.

One of us (Locke-Rodriguez) is expanding this research and working to scale up floating farms in South Florida as a demonstration of what could take place in the many locations facing similar issues worldwide.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.The Conversation

Jazmin Locke-Rodriguez, Post Doctoral Associate in the Institute of Environment, Florida International University, and Krishnaswamy Jayachandran, Professor of Agroecology, Florida International University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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skyrocketing-ocean-temperatures-have-scientists-scratching-their-heads

Skyrocketing ocean temperatures have scientists scratching their heads

climate change, global warming, ocean temperatures, Science, syndication / /
beach scene with thermometer

jay_zynism via Getty

For nearly a year now, a bizarre heating event has been unfolding across the world’s oceans. In March 2023, global sea surface temperatures started shattering record daily highs and have stayed that way since.

You can see 2023 in the orange line below, the other gray lines being previous years. That solid black line is where we are so far in 2024—way, way above even 2023. While we’re nowhere near the Atlantic hurricane season yet—that runs from June 1 through the autumn—keep in mind that cyclones feed on warm ocean water, which could well stay anomalously hot in the coming months. Regardless, these surface temperature anomalies could be triggering major ecological problems already.

“In the tropical eastern Atlantic, it’s four months ahead of pace—it’s looking like it’s already June out there,” says Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. “It’s really getting to be strange that we’re just seeing the records break by this much, and for this long.”

You’ll notice from these graphs and maps that the temperature anomalies may be a degree or two Celsius warmer, which may not sound like much. But for the seas, it really is: Unlike land, which rapidly heats and cools as day turns to night and back again, it takes a lot to warm up an ocean that may be thousands of feet deep. So even an anomaly of mere fractions of a degree is significant. “To get into the two or three or four degrees, like it is in a few places, it’s pretty exceptional,” says McNoldy.

University of Maine

So what’s going on here? For one, the oceans have been steadily warming over the decades, absorbing something like 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have added to the atmosphere. “The oceans are our saviors, in a way,” says biological oceanographer Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. “Things might be a lot worse in terms of climate impacts, because a lot of that heat is not only kept at the surface, it’s taken to depths.”

A major concern with such warm surface temperatures is the health of the ecosystems floating there: phytoplankton that bloom by soaking up the sun’s energy and the tiny zooplankton that feed on them. If temperatures get too high, certain species might suffer, shaking the foundations of the ocean food web.

Skyrocketing ocean temperatures have scientists scratching their heads Read More »

london-underground-is-testing-real-time-ai-surveillance-tools-to-spot-crime

London Underground is testing real-time AI surveillance tools to spot crime

AI, AI surveillance, Biz & IT, Freedom of information act, london underground, Security, syndication / /

tube tracking —

Computer vision system tried to detect crime, weapons, people falling, and fare dodgers.

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Commuters wait on the platform as a Central Line tube train arrives at Liverpool Street London Transport Tube Station in 2023.

Thousands of people using the London Underground had their movements, behavior, and body language watched by AI surveillance software designed to see if they were committing crimes or were in unsafe situations, new documents obtained by WIRED reveal. The machine-learning software was combined with live CCTV footage to try to detect aggressive behavior and guns or knives being brandished, as well as looking for people falling onto Tube tracks or dodging fares.

From October 2022 until the end of September 2023, Transport for London (TfL), which operates the city’s Tube and bus network, tested 11 algorithms to monitor people passing through Willesden Green Tube station, in the northwest of the city. The proof of concept trial is the first time the transport body has combined AI and live video footage to generate alerts that are sent to frontline staff. More than 44,000 alerts were issued during the test, with 19,000 being delivered to station staff in real time.

Documents sent to WIRED in response to a Freedom of Information Act request detail how TfL used a wide range of computer vision algorithms to track people’s behavior while they were at the station. It is the first time the full details of the trial have been reported, and it follows TfL saying, in December, that it will expand its use of AI to detect fare dodging to more stations across the British capital.

In the trial at Willesden Green—a station that had 25,000 visitors per day before the COVID-19 pandemic—the AI system was set up to detect potential safety incidents to allow staff to help people in need, but it also targeted criminal and antisocial behavior. Three documents provided to WIRED detail how AI models were used to detect wheelchairs, prams, vaping, people accessing unauthorized areas, or putting themselves in danger by getting close to the edge of the train platforms.

The documents, which are partially redacted, also show how the AI made errors during the trial, such as flagging children who were following their parents through ticket barriers as potential fare dodgers, or not being able to tell the difference between a folding bike and a non-folding bike. Police officers also assisted the trial by holding a machete and a gun in the view of CCTV cameras, while the station was closed, to help the system better detect weapons.

Privacy experts who reviewed the documents question the accuracy of object detection algorithms. They also say it is not clear how many people knew about the trial, and warn that such surveillance systems could easily be expanded in the future to include more sophisticated detection systems or face recognition software that attempts to identify specific individuals. “While this trial did not involve facial recognition, the use of AI in a public space to identify behaviors, analyze body language, and infer protected characteristics raises many of the same scientific, ethical, legal, and societal questions raised by facial recognition technologies,” says Michael Birtwistle, associate director at the independent research institute the Ada Lovelace Institute.

In response to WIRED’s Freedom of Information request, the TfL says it used existing CCTV images, AI algorithms, and “numerous detection models” to detect patterns of behavior. “By providing station staff with insights and notifications on customer movement and behaviour they will hopefully be able to respond to any situations more quickly,” the response says. It also says the trial has provided insight into fare evasion that will “assist us in our future approaches and interventions,” and the data gathered is in line with its data policies.

In a statement sent after publication of this article, Mandy McGregor, TfL’s head of policy and community safety, says the trial results are continuing to be analyzed and adds, “there was no evidence of bias” in the data collected from the trial. During the trial, McGregor says, there were no signs in place at the station that mentioned the tests of AI surveillance tools.

“We are currently considering the design and scope of a second phase of the trial. No other decisions have been taken about expanding the use of this technology, either to further stations or adding capability.” McGregor says. “Any wider roll out of the technology beyond a pilot would be dependent on a full consultation with local communities and other relevant stakeholders, including experts in the field.”

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these-states-are-basically-begging-you-to-get-a-heat-pump

These states are basically begging you to get a heat pump

heat pump, Policy, Science, syndication / /

feel the heat —

Nine states are teaming up to accelerate adoption of this climate-friendly device.

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Thermal imaging of two heat pumps and fan units, showing red and orange areas with elevated temperatures.

Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. They’re already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch.

Nine states have signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030. (“Shipments” here means systems manufactured, a proxy for how many are actually sold.) By 2040, these states—California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island—are aiming for 90 percent of those shipments to be heat pumps.

“It’s a really strong signal from states that they’re committed to accelerating this transition to zero-emissions residential buildings,” says Emily Levin, senior policy adviser at the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), an association of air-quality agencies, which facilitated the agreement. The states will collaborate, for instance, in pursuing federal funding, developing standards for the rollout of heat pumps, and laying out an overarching plan “with priority actions to support widespread electrification of residential buildings.”

Instead of burning planet-warming natural gas, a heat pump warms a building by transferring heat from the outdoor air into the interior space. Run it in the opposite direction, and it can cool the inside of a building—a heat pump is both a heater and AC unit. Because the system is electric, it can run off a grid increasingly powered by renewables like wind and solar. Even if you have to run a heat pump with electricity from fossil-fuel power plants, it’s much more efficient than a furnace, because it’s moving heat instead of creating it.

A heat pump can save an average American household over $550 a year, according to one estimate. They’ve gotten so efficient that even when it’s freezing out, they can still extract warmth from the air to heat a home. You can even install a heat pump system that also warms your water. “We really need consumers to move away from dirty to clean heat, and we really want to get the message out that heat pumps are really the way to go,” says Serena McIlwain, Maryland’s secretary of the environment. “We have homeowners who are getting ready to replace their furnaces, and if they’re not aware, they are not going to replace it with a heat pump.”

The coalition’s announcement comes just months after the federal government doubled down on its own commitment to heat pumps, announcing $169 million in funding for the domestic production of the systems. That money comes from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, which also provides an American household with thousands of dollars in rebates or tax credits to switch to a heat pump.

These states are aiming to further collaborate with those heat pump manufacturers by tracking sales and overall progress, sending a signal to the industry to ramp up production to meet the ensuing demand. They’ll also collaborate with each other on research and generally share information, working toward the best strategies for realizing the transition from gas to electric. Basically, they’re pursuing a sort of standardization of the policies and regulations for getting more heat pumps built, bought, and installed, which other states outside of the coalition might eventually tap into.

“A consistent approach between states helps to ease the market transition,” says Matt Casale, senior manager of appliance standards at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, which is collaborating with the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management. “There are all of these manufacturers, and all of these contractors, all along the supply chain, trying to plan out their next several years. They want to know: What is it going to look like?”

There’s also the less-talked-about challenge of the green energy revolution: training enough technicians to actually install the heat pumps. To that end, the memorandum calls for workforce development and contractor training. “If we’re pushing heat pumps and more installations, and we don’t have enough electricians to do the job, we’re not going to meet the goal—period,” says McIlwain. “We do need to put a lot of money and energy and resources into making sure that we have the workforce available to do it.”

In addition to the technicians working with the systems, the country needs way more electricians to retrofit homes to go fully electric beyond heat pumps, with solar panels and induction stoves and home batteries. To help there, last year the White House announced the formation of the American Climate Corps, which aims to put more than 20,000 people to work in clean energy and overall climate resilience.

With states collaborating like this on heat pumps, the idea is to lift the device from an obscure technology cherished by climate nerds into ubiquity, for the good of consumers and the planet. “We need to be sending these unmistakable signals to the marketplace that heat pumps and zero-emission homes are the future,” says Casale. “This agreement between this many states really sets the stage for doing that.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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microsoft-in-deal-with-semafor-to-create-news-stories-with-aid-of-ai-chatbot

Microsoft in deal with Semafor to create news stories with aid of AI chatbot

AI, Biz & IT, chatbot, microsoft, Semafor, syndication / /

a meeting-deadline helper —

Collaboration comes as tech giant faces multibillion-dollar lawsuit from The New York Times.

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Cube with Microsoft logo on top of their office building on 8th Avenue and 42nd Street near Times Square in New York City.

Enlarge / Cube with Microsoft logo on top of their office building on 8th Avenue and 42nd Street near Times Square in New York City.

Microsoft is working with media startup Semafor to use its artificial intelligence chatbot to help develop news stories—part of a journalistic outreach that comes as the tech giant faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the New York Times.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft is paying an undisclosed sum of money to Semafor to sponsor a breaking news feed called “Signals.” The companies would not share financial details, but the amount of money is “substantial” to Semafor’s business, said a person familiar with the matter.

Signals will offer a feed of breaking news and analysis on big stories, with about a dozen posts a day. The goal is to offer different points of view from across the globe—a key focus for Semafor since its launch in 2022.

Semafor co-founder Ben Smith emphasized that Signals will be written entirely by journalists, with artificial intelligence providing a research tool to inform posts.

Microsoft on Monday was also set to announce collaborations with journalist organizations including the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, the Online News Association, and the GroundTruth Project.

The partnerships come as media companies have become increasingly concerned over generative AI and its potential threat to their businesses. News publishers are grappling with how to use AI to improve their work and stay ahead of technology, while also fearing that they could lose traffic, and therefore revenue, to AI chatbots—which can churn out humanlike text and information in seconds.

The New York Times in December filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging the tech companies have taken a “free ride” on millions of its articles to build their artificial intelligence chatbots, and seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Gina Chua, Semafor’s executive editor, has been involved in developing Semafor’s AI research tools, which are powered by ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing.

“Journalism has always used technology whether it’s carrier pigeons, the telegraph or anything else . . . this represents a real opportunity, a set of tools that are really a quantum leap above many of the other tools that have come along,” Chua said.

For a breaking news event, Semafor journalists will use AI tools to quickly search for reporting and commentary from other news sources across the globe in multiple languages. A Signals post might include perspectives from Chinese, Indian, or Russian media, for example, with Semafor’s reporters summarizing and contextualizing the different points of view, while citing its sources.

Noreen Gillespie, a former Associated Press journalist, joined Microsoft three months ago to forge relationships with news companies. “Journalists need to adopt these tools in order to survive and thrive for another generation,” she said.

Semafor was founded by Ben Smith, the former BuzzFeed editor, and Justin Smith, the former chief executive of Bloomberg Media.

Semafor, which is free to read, is funded by wealthy individuals, including 3G capital founder Jorge Paulo Lemann and KKR co-founder Henry Kravis. The company made more than $10 million in revenue in 2023 and has more than 500,000 subscriptions to its free newsletters. Justin Smith said Semafor was “very close to a profit” in the fourth quarter of 2023.

“What we’re trying to go after is this really weird space of breaking news on the Internet now, in which you have these really splintered, fragmented, rushed efforts to get the first sentence of a story out for search engines . . . and then never really make any effort to provide context,” Ben Smith said.

“We’re trying to go the other way. Here are the confirmed facts. Here are three or four pieces of really sophisticated, meaningful analysis.”

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not copy and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.

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hermit-crabs-find-new-homes-in-plastic-waste:-shell-shortage-or-clever choice?

Hermit crabs find new homes in plastic waste: Shell shortage or clever choice?

hermit crabs, Science, syndication / /

ocean real estate bargains —

The crustaceans are making the most of what they find on the seafloor.

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hermit crab in plastic pen cap

Enlarge / Scientists have found that hermit crabs are increasingly using plastic and other litter as makeshift shell homes.

Land hermit crabs have been using bottle tops, parts of old light bulbs and broken glass bottles, instead of shells.

New research by Polish researchers studied 386 images of hermit crabs occupying these artificial shells. The photos had been uploaded by users to online platforms, then analyzed by scientists using a research approach known as iEcology. Of the 386 photos, the vast majority, 326 cases, featured hermit crabs using plastic items as shelters.

At first glance, this is a striking example of how human activities can alter the behavior of wild animals and potentially the ways that populations and ecosystems function as a result. But there are lots of factors at play and, while it’s easy to jump to conclusions, it’s important to consider exactly what might be driving this particular change.

Shell selection

Hermit crabs are an excellent model organism to study because they behave in many different ways and those differences can be easily measured. Instead of continuously growing their own shell to protect their body, like a normal crab or a lobster would, they use empty shells left behind by dead snails. As they walk around, the shell protects their soft abdomen but whenever they are threatened they retract their whole body into the shell. Their shells act as portable shelters.

Having a good enough shell is critical to an individual’s survival so they acquire and upgrade their shells as they grow. They fight other hermit crabs for shells and assess any new shells that they might find for suitability. Primarily, they look for shells that are large enough to protect them, but their decision-making also takes into account the type of snail shell, its condition and even its color—a factor that could impact how conspicuous the crab might be.

Another factor that constrains shell choice is the actual availability of suitable shells. For some as yet unknown reason, a proportion of land hermit crabs are choosing to occupy plastic items rather than natural shells, as highlighted by this latest study.

Housing crisis or ingenious new move?

Humans have intentionally changed the behavior of animals for millennia through the process of domestication. Any unintended behavioral changes in natural animal populations are potentially concerning, but how worried should we be about hermit crabs using plastic litter as shelter?

The Polish research raises a number of questions. First, how prevalent is the adoption of plastic litter instead of shells? While 326 crabs using plastic seems like a lot, this is likely to be an underestimation of the raw number given that users are likely to encounter crabs only in accessible parts of the populations. Conversely, it seems probable that users could be biased towards uploading striking or unusual images, so the iEcology approach might produce an exaggerated impression of the proportion of individuals in a population opting for plastic over natural shells. We need structured field surveys to clarify this.

Second, why are some individual crabs using plastic? One possibility is that they are forced to due to a lack of natural shells, but we can’t test this hypothesis without more information on the demographics of local snail populations. Or perhaps the crabs prefer plastic or find it easier to locate, compared with real shells? As the authors point out, plastic might be lighter than the equivalent shells affording the same amount of protection but at lower energy cost of carrying them. Intriguingly, chemicals that leach out of plastic are known to attract marine hermit crabs by mimicking the odor of food.

As hermit crabs adapt to an increase in plastic pollution, more research is needed to investigate the nuances.

Enlarge / As hermit crabs adapt to an increase in plastic pollution, more research is needed to investigate the nuances.

This leads to a third question about the possible downsides of using plastic. Compared to real shells plastic waste tends to be brighter and might contrast more with the background making the crabs more vulnerable to predators. Additionally, we know that exposure to microplastics and compounds that leach from plastic can change the behaviour of hermit crabs, making them less fussy about the shells that they choose, less adept at fighting for shells and even changing their personalities by making them more prone to take risks. To answer these questions about the causes and consequences of hermit crabs using plastic waste in this way, we need to investigate their shell selection behavior through a series of laboratory experiments.

Pollution changes behavior

Plastic pollution is just one of the ways we are changing our environment. It’s by far the most highly reported form of debris that we have introduced to marine environments. But animal behavior is affected by other forms of pollution too, including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, light, and noise, plus the rising temperatures and ocean acidification caused by climate change.

So while investigating the use of plastic waste by hermit crabs could help us better understand the consequences of certain human impacts on the environment, it doesn’t show how exactly animals will adjust to the Anthropocene, the era during which human activity has been having a significant impact on the planet. Will they cope by using plastic behavioral responses or evolve across generations, or perhaps both? In my view, the iEcology approach cannot answer questions like this. Rather, this study acts as an alarm bell highlighting potential changes that now need to be fully investigated.

Mark Briffa, Professor of Animal Behaviour, University of Plymouth. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua and Borisov may hold clues to exoplanets

‘Oumuamua, Borisov, exoplanets, Science, Space, syndication / /

celestial nomads —

Two celestial interlopers in Solar System have scientists eagerly anticipating more.

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The first interstellar interloper detected passing through the Solar System, 1l/‘Oumuamua, came within 24 million miles of the Sun in 2017

Enlarge / The first interstellar interloper detected passing through the Solar System, 1l/‘Oumuamua, came within 24 million miles of the Sun in 2017. It’s difficult to know exactly what ‘Oumuamua looked like, but it was probably oddly shaped and elongated, as depicted in this illustration.

On October 17 and 18, 2017, an unusual object sped across the field of view of a large telescope perched near the summit of a volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The Pan-STARRS1 telescope was designed to survey the sky for transient events, like asteroid or comet flybys. But this was different: The object was not gravitationally bound to the Sun or to any other celestial body. It had arrived from somewhere else.

The mysterious object was the first visitor from interstellar space observed passing through the Solar System. Astronomers named it 1I/‘Oumuamua, borrowing a Hawaiian word that roughly translates to “messenger from afar arriving first.” Two years later, in August 2019, amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov discovered the only other known interstellar interloper, now called 2I/Borisov, using a self-built telescope at the MARGO observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea.

While typical asteroids and comets in the Solar System orbit the Sun, ‘Oumuamua and Borisov are celestial nomads, spending most of their time wandering interstellar space. The existence of such interlopers in the Solar System had been hypothesized, but scientists expected them to be rare. “I never thought we would see one,” says astrophysicist Susanne Pfalzner of the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany. At least not in her lifetime.

With these two discoveries, scientists now suspect that interstellar interlopers are much more common. Right now, within the orbit of Neptune alone, there could be around 10,000 ‘Oumuamua-size interstellar objects, estimates planetary scientist David Jewitt of UCLA, coauthor of an overview of the current understanding of interstellar interlopers in the 2023 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Researchers are busy trying to answer basic questions about these alien objects, including where they come from and how they end up wandering the galaxy. Interlopers could also provide a new way to probe features of distant planetary systems.

But first, astronomers need to find more of them.

“We’re a little behind at the moment,” Jewitt says. “But we expect to see more.”

2I/Borisov appears as a fuzzy blue dot in front of a distant spiral galaxy (left) in this November 2019 image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope when the object was approximately 200 million miles from Earth.

Enlarge / 2I/Borisov appears as a fuzzy blue dot in front of a distant spiral galaxy (left) in this November 2019 image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope when the object was approximately 200 million miles from Earth.

Alien origins

At least since the beginning of the 18th century, astronomers have considered the possibility that interstellar objects exist. More recently, computer models have shown that the Solar System sent its own population of smaller bodies into the voids of interstellar space long ago due to gravitational interactions with the giant planets.

Scientists expected most interlopers to be exocomets composed of icy materials. Borisov fit this profile: It had a tail made of gases and dust created by ices that evaporated during its close passage to the Sun. This suggests that it originated in the outer region of a planetary system where temperatures were cold enough for gases like carbon monoxide to have frozen into its rocks. At some point, something tossed Borisov, roughly a kilometer across, out of its system.

One potential culprit is a stellar flyby. The gravity of a passing star can eject smaller bodies, known as planetesimals, from the outer reaches of a system, according to a recent study led by Pfalzner. A giant planet could also eject an object from the outer regions of a planetary system if an asteroid or comet gets close enough for the planet’s gravitational tug to speed up the smaller body enough for it to escape its star’s hold. Close approaches can also happen when planets migrate across their planetary systems, as Neptune is thought to have done in the early Solar System.

Why interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua and Borisov may hold clues to exoplanets Read More »

a-startup-allegedly-“hacked-the-world”-then-came-the-censorship—and-now-the-backlash.

A startup allegedly “hacked the world.” Then came the censorship—and now the backlash.

Biz & IT, hackers, Security, syndication / /

hacker-for-hire —

Anti-censorship voices are working to highlight reports of one Indian company’s hacker past.

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A startup allegedly “hacked the world.” Then came the censorship—and now the backlash.

Hacker-for-hire firms like NSO Group and Hacking Team have become notorious for enabling their customers to spy on vulnerable members of civil society. But as far back as a decade ago in India, a startup called Appin Technology and its subsidiaries allegedly played a similar cyber-mercenary role while attracting far less attention. Over the past two years, a collection of people with direct and indirect links to that company have been working to keep it that way, using a campaign of legal threats to silence publishers and anyone else reporting on Appin Technology’s alleged hacking past. Now, a loose coalition of anti-censorship voices is working to make that strategy backfire.

For months, lawyers and executives with ties to Appin Technology and to a newer organization that shares part of its name, called the Association of Appin Training Centers, have used lawsuits and legal threats to carry out an aggressive censorship campaign across the globe. These efforts have demanded that more than a dozen publications amend or fully remove references to the original Appin Technology’s alleged illegal hacking or, in some cases, mentions of that company’s co-founder, Rajat Khare. Most prominently, a lawsuit against Reuters brought by the Association of Appin Training Centers resulted in a stunning order from a Delhi court: It demanded that Reuters take down its article based on a blockbuster investigation into Appin Technology that had detailed its alleged targeting and spying on opposition leaders, corporate competitors, lawyers, and wealthy individuals on behalf of customers worldwide. Reuters “temporarily” removed its article in compliance with that injunction and is fighting the order in Indian court.

As Appin Training Centers has sought to enforce that same order against a slew of other news outlets, however, resistance is building. Earlier this week, the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sent a response—published here—pushing back against Appin Training Centers’ legal threats on behalf of media organizations caught in this crossfire, including the tech blog Techdirt and the investigative news nonprofit MuckRock.

No media outlet has claimed that Appin Training Centers—a group that describes itself as an educational firm run in part by former franchisees of the original Appin Technology, which reportedly ceased its alleged hacking operations more than a decade ago—has been involved in any illegal hacking. In December, however, Appin Training Centers sent emails to Techdirt and MuckRock demanding they too take down all content related to allegations that Appin Technology previously engaged in widespread cyberspying operations, citing the court order against Reuters.

Techdirt, Appin Training Centers argued, fell under that injunction by writing about Reuters’ story and the takedown order targeting it. So had MuckRock, the plaintiffs claimed, which hosted some of the documents that Reuters had cited in its story and uploaded to MuckRock’s DocumentCloud service. In the response sent on their behalf, the EFF states that the two media organizations are refusing to comply, arguing that the Indian court’s injunction “is in no way the global takedown order your correspondence represents it to be.” It also cites an American law called the SPEECH Act that deems any foreign court’s libel ruling that violates the First Amendment unenforceable in the US.

“It’s not a good state for a free press when one company can, around the world, disappear news articles,” Michael Morisy, the CEO and co-founder of MuckRock, tells WIRED. “That’s something that fundamentally we need to push back against.”

Techdirt founder Mike Masnick says that, beyond defeating the censorship of the Appin Technology story, he hopes their public response to that censorship effort will ultimately bring even more attention to the group’s past. In fact, 19 years ago, Masnick coined the term “the Streisand effect” to describe a situation in which someone’s attempt to hide information results in its broader exposure—exactly the situation he hopes to help create in this case. “The suppression of accurate reporting is problematic,” says Masnick. “When it happens, it deserves to be called out, and there should be more attention paid to those trying to silence it.”

The anti-secrecy nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) has also joined the effort to spark that Streisand Effect, “uncensoring” Reuters’ story on the original Appin Technology as part of a new initiative it calls the Greenhouse Project. DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says the name comes from its intention to foster a “warming effect”—the opposite of the “chilling effect” used to describe the self-censorship created by legal threats. “It sends a signal to would-be censors, telling them that their success may be fleeting and limited,” Best says. “And it assures other journalists that their work can survive.”

Neither Appin Training Centers nor Rajat Khare responded to WIRED’s request for comment, nor did Reuters.

The fight to expose the original Appin Technology’s alleged hacking history began to reach a head in November of 2022, when the Association for Appin Training Centers sued Reuters based only on its reporters’ unsolicited messages to Appin Training Centers’ employees and students. The company’s legal complaint, filed in India’s judicial system, accused Reuters not only of defamation, but “mental harassment, stalking, sexual misconduct and trauma.”

Nearly a full year later, Reuters nonetheless published its article, “How an Indian Startup Hacked the World.” The judge in the case initially sided with Appin Training Centers, writing that the article could have a “devastating effect on the general students population of India.” He quickly ordered an injunction stating that Appin Training Centers can demand Reuters take down their claims about Appin Technology.

A startup allegedly “hacked the world.” Then came the censorship—and now the backlash. Read More »

we-keep-making-the-same-mistakes-with-spreadsheets,-despite-bad-consequences

We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences

Science, spreadsheets, syndication / /

Not excelling at Excel —

Errors with spreadsheets are not only frustrating but can have serious consequences.

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A dude being sad about his spreadhseet

Spreadsheet blunders aren’t just frustrating personal inconveniences. They can have serious consequences. And in the last few years alone, there have been a myriad of spreadsheet horror stories.

In August 2023, the Police Service of Northern Ireland apologized for a data leak of “monumental proportions” when a spreadsheet that contained statistics on the number of officers it had and their rank was shared online in response to a freedom of information request.

There was a second overlooked tab on the spreadsheet that contained the personal details of 10,000 serving police officers.

A series of spreadsheet errors disrupted the recruitment of trainee anesthetists in Wales in late 2021. The Anaesthetic National Recruitment Office (ANRO), the body responsible for their selection and recruitment, told all the candidates for positions in Wales they were “unappointable”, despite some of them achieving the highest interview scores.

The blame fell on the process of consolidating interview data. Spreadsheets from different areas lacked standardization in formatting, naming conventions, and overall structure. To make matters worse, data was manually copied and pasted between various spreadsheets, a time-consuming and error-prone process.

ANRO only discovered the blunder when rejected applicants questioned their dismissal letters. The fact that not a single candidate seemed acceptable for Welsh positions should have been a red flag. No testing or validation was apparently applied to the crucial spreadsheet, a simple step that could have prevented this critical error.

In 2021, Crypto.com, an online provider of cryptocurrency, accidentally transferred $10.5 million (£8.3 million) instead of $100 into the account of an Australian customer due to an incorrect number being entered on a spreadsheet.

The clerk who processed the refund for the Australian customer had wrongly entered her bank account number in the refund field in a spreadsheet. It was seven months before the mistake was spotted. The recipient attempted to flee to Malaysia but was stopped at an Australian airport carrying a large amount of cash.

In 2022, Íslandsbanki, a state-owned Icelandic bank, sold a portion of shares that were badly undervalued due to a spreadsheet error. When consolidating assets from different spreadsheets, the spreadsheet data was not “cleaned” and formatted properly. The bank’s shares were subsequently undervalued by as much as £16 million.

The dark matter of corporate IT

The above is just a fraction of the spreadsheet errors that are regularly made by various organizations.

Spreadsheets represent unknown risks in the form of errors, privacy violations, trade secrets, and compliance violations. Yet they are also critical for the way many organizations make their decisions. For this reason, they have been described by experts as the “dark matter” of corporate IT.

Industry studies show that 90 percent of spreadsheets containing more than 150 rows have at least one major mistake.

This is understandable because spreadsheet errors are easy to make but difficult to spot. My own research has shown that inspecting the spreadsheet’s code is the most effective way of debugging them, but this approach still only catches between 60 and 80 percent of all errors.

As many as 9 out of 10 spreadsheets are estimated to contain errors.

As many as 9 out of 10 spreadsheets are estimated to contain errors.

Spreadsheets’ appeal doesn’t just exist in the financial world. They are indispensable in engineering, data science, and even in sending robots to Mars. The key to their success is their flexibility.

Spreadsheet software is constantly evolving, with more features becoming available that increase their appeal. For instance, you can now automate many tasks in Excel (the most popular spreadsheet software) using Python scripting.

But given all of the aforementioned problems, isn’t it time for Excel and other spreadsheet software to be sidelined in favor of something more reliable?

Human error

The underlying cause of these spreadsheet problems is not the software but human error.

The issue is that most users don’t see the need to plan or test their work. Most users describe their first step in creating a new spreadsheet as merely jumping straight in and entering numbers or code directly.

Many of us don’t consider spreadsheets to warrant serious consideration. This means we become complacent and assume there is no need to test, validate, or verify our work.

Research on “cognitive load,” the amount of mental effort required for a task, shows that building complex spreadsheets demands as much concentration as a GP making a diagnosis. This intense mental strain makes mistakes more likely. But GPs study their profession for many years before becoming qualified, while most spreadsheet users are self-taught.

To break the cycle of repeated spreadsheet errors, there are several things organisations can do. First, introducing standardization would help to minimize confusion and mistakes. For example, this would mean consistent formatting, naming conventions, and data structures across spreadsheets.

Second, improving training is crucial. Equipping users with the knowledge and skills to build robust and accurate spreadsheets could help them identify and avoid pitfalls.

Finally, fostering a culture of critical thinking toward spreadsheets is vital. This would mean encouraging users to continually question calculations, validate their data sources, and double-check their work.

Simon Thorne is Senior Lecturer in Computing and ​Information Systems at Cardiff Metropolitan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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