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Vox – “A new UN interactive atlas reveals how climate change will shape weather around the world. Humans have warmed the planet by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius since industrialization began in the 19th century. This small-sounding change has helped fuel severe wildfires, record-breaking heatwaves, floods, and an ever-growing list of other disasters. What’s …
Engadget: “The New York City Police Department has spent over $159 million on surveillance systems and maintenance since 2007 without public oversight, according to newly released documents. The Legal Aid Society (LAS) and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) obtained the documents from the NYPD, which include contracts with vendors. They show that the NYPD …
National Geographic – “An animal rights organization wants a New York court to grant Happy the elephant legal personhood. But what would that mean?…”
MIT Technology Review: “TikTok’s decision to use a woman’s voice without her permission is only one recent example of a problem that some mistakenly think we’ve moved past… When we think of women in computing, we often think about how, both literally and figuratively, they have been silenced more often than they’ve been listened to. …
Bill of Health – by Doron Dorfman, Associate Professor of Law at Syracuse University College of Law: “…calls for getting back to the office raise particular quandaries for employees with disabilities, many of whom have disproportionally borne the brunt of pandemic layoffs. First, there are those who started a new job remotely during the pandemic and …
MIT Technology Review: “The world first learned of Sophie Zhang in September 2020, when BuzzFeed News obtained and published highlights from an abridged version of her nearly 8,000-word exit memo from Facebook. Before she was fired, Zhang was officially employed as a low-level data scientist at the company. But she had become consumed by a …
Axios: “Face-recognition tech is coming to a store near you, if it’s not there already, and that’s sparking a new wave of opposition. Why it matters: The systems can scan or store facial images of both shoppers and workers. Their use accelerated during the pandemic as retailers looked for ways to prevent fraud, track foot …
EFF: ““You can record all you want. I just know it can’t be posted to YouTube,” said an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy to an activist. “I am playing my music so that you can’t post on YouTube.” The tactic didn’t work—the video of his statement can in fact, as of this writing, be viewed on …
The Verge: “Amnesty International — part of the group that helped break the news of journalists and heads of state being targeted by NSO’s government-grade spyware, Pegasus — has released a tool to check if your phone has been affected. Alongside the tool is a great set of instructions, which should help you through the …
Conklin, Michael and Wu, Jun, Justice by Algorithm: Are Artificial Intelligence Risk Assessment Tools Biased Against Minorities? (June 30, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3877686 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3877686 “This is a review of Katherine B. Forrest’s new book When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner. The book does an excellent job discussing issues of fairness and …
Literary Hub: “If surveillance doesn’t make us act differently, explain this: The psychology department’s coffee room at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom offers coffee and tea on the honor system: users put their money in a box. The department decided to rotate different price list signs as part of a research study. One week …
Aeon: “Over the past several decades, issues of animal rights have transformed from something of a niche cause to a mainstream concern in much of the world. It’s no coincidence that this increased consciousness has occurred amid a flurry of research detailing how nonhuman animals thrive, suffer, emote and process information in ways quite similar …
