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Nicholas Wade: Origin of Covid – Following the Clues
“” is published by Nicholas Wade.
The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think
The multi-skin toned handshake emoji reveals that it is more than a routine gesture
Why are there so many Canadians in India?
Any time India comes up in the context of Firefox and Data I know it’s going to be an interesting day. They’re our largest Beta population: They’re our second-largest English user…
Clubhouse doesn’t value privacy, security or accessibility
It is tempting to excuse Clubhouse’s flaws as growing pains, but the app’s design and rollout illustrate just how little Silicon Valley and its venture capital backers have learned.
How Tech Loses Out
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Hi everyone, This is a transcript of my presentation over at the European Microwave Week 2020, actually held in 2021. You can find the video here and the slides here. I’d like to thank Frank van Vliet, general chair of the EMW, for inviting me…
Google I/O 2021 and Uncomfortable Questions
Android app development books
Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen.
What's going on here, with this human?
The philosopher Kwame Appiah writes that “in life, the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you’re playing.” When I try to figure out what game I’m playing, I see that for the last 25 years I have been playing […]
Excess Deaths in 2020
Update Updated on April 29th, 2021. The CDC continues to update its counts of deaths by cause for 2020 as data comes in from the jurisdictions that report to it. The data are by now fairly complete, though there are still significant gaps in several states due to delayed reporting. North Carolina, in particular, has…
DPA blocks facial recognition system in Italy and MP proposes moratorium
Italian DPA argues the SARI Real Time facial recognition system lacks a legal basis and, as designed, it would implement a form of mass surveillance. On 14 April, a member of the Italian Parliament, Filippo Sensi, proposed a moratorium on the use of video surveillance tools that use Facial Recognition.
New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity
In the United Kingdom, most people don’t feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work. For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable. People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward. These…
The United States needs to learn how to learn
I just saw an announcement from November of 2020 in which the Federal Transit Administration proposes to study international best practices… in on-demand public transit. It goes without sayin…
Who won the Amstel Gold Race? Human error in photo-finishes
Investigating the photo-finish of last Sunday's Amstel Gold Race. With millimeters separating the two riders does the photo-finish camera tell the truth?
Ed Balls Day
Ed Balls Day is a bit of fun and the stuff of nonsense. It celebrates and remembers the day (28 April 2011) when British politician Ed Balls tweeted his name thinking he was entering it into a sear…
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
It’s the first half of 2021 – nearly five years since the “first half of 2016” – but in many ways not much has changed. The United Kingdom is still trying to figure out Brexit, another Justin Bieber song hit #1 on the charts (is it too late now to say sorry?), and Signal still doesn’t really know...
Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
Economic inequality in hiring is in part driven by snap perceptions of job applicants’ speech patterns, new Yale research shows.
An open letter to Jason and David
Dear Jason and David, aka the founder-owners of Basecamp who up until 2021 earned 100% of the company’s profits along with Jeff Bezos, As you know, I am writing this while on medical leave fr…
Types of Legal Argument
I have been teaching about legal reasoning and legal argumentation for years. When I do so, I try to impress upon students that legal argume...
We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis
How simple structured data trumps clever machine learning
Study finds ride-sharing intensifies urban road congestion
A study to assess how ride-sharing impacts urban mobility in the United States found ride-sharing increased both intensity and duration of road congestion while there was no significant change in private vehicle ownership.
The Tamagotchi Cemetery
In 1996, Japanese toy designers Aki Maita and Yokoi Akihiro debuted the first ever Tamagotchi.