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Daily Archives: April 23, 2019

Textio’s New Tool Will Take the Words Right Out of Your Mouth—and Maybe Improve Them

Fortune: “Words matter, and they often matter in different ways to different people. That’s why, for the past five years, text analytics startup Textio has studied—and helped to augment—the way companies in search of more diverse candidates communicate with prospective hires. Now, the company is launching a new product that takes that mission one step further…Think of Textio Flow as Google Smart Compose, only much more prolific and with an eye for culture change. Instead of suggesting a few words, the tool can write whole paragraphs for you. It does this by ingesting a company’s past writings—marketing material, historical job listings and the like—and incorporating Textio’s own large datasets. The latter helps customers learn from existing (and ever-changing) correlations between words and the varying responses they trigger in different demographics. That can mean two things for corporate customers: First, they can write job listings much faster, and second, they can theoretically attract even more people with each listing…”

Here’s How TurboTax Just Tricked You Into Paying to File Your Taxes

ProPublica: “Did you know that if you make less than $66,000 a year, you can prepare and file your taxes for free? No? That’s no accident. Companies that make tax preparation software, like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, would rather you didn’t know. Intuit and other tax software companies have spent millions lobbying to make… Continue Reading

Court Says Using Chalk On Tires For Parking Enforcement Violates Constitution

Wow – via NPR – “The next time parking enforcement officers use chalk to mark your tires, they might be acting unconstitutionally. A federal appeals court ruled Monday that “chalking” is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The case was brought by Alison Taylor, a Michigan woman whom the court describes as a “frequent recipient… Continue Reading

Constraints on presidency being redefined in Trump era, report fallout shows

Washington Post – “President Trump repeatedly tried to undermine the Russia investigation, but the special counsel overseeing the probe declined to say whether he broke the law — and the attorney general declared that he had committed no crime. Trump’s campaign showed a willingness to work with a foreign power — something his personal lawyer… Continue Reading

FBI Releases the Internet Crime Complaint Center 2018 Internet Crime Report

The FBI Alerts the Public to Trends in Internet Crime and Offers Prevention Tips – “The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2018 Internet Crime Report includes information from 351,936 complaints of suspected Internet crime, with reported losses in excess of $2.7 billion. The top three crime types reported by victims in 2018 were non-payment/non-delivery,… Continue Reading

How Recommendation Algorithms Run the World

Wired – “…What should you watch? What should you read? What’s news? What’s trending? Wherever you go online, companies have come up with very particular, imperfect ways of answering these questions. Everywhere you look, recommendation engines offer striking examples of how values and judgments become embedded in algorithms and how algorithms can be gamed by… Continue Reading