Apple reportedly postpones in-person work until at least October

Likely the first of many. [Link]

In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems Especially Distracting to Older Drivers

On car touchscreens and voice interfaces: “Researchers found that the technology created potentially unsafe distractions for all drivers, though this safety risk is more pronounced for older adults, who took longer (4.7-8.6 seconds) to complete tasks, experienced slower response times, and increased visual distractions.” [Link]

Police in Latin America are turning activists’ phones against them

"To break into devices more easily, a number of Latin American countries have contracted cybersecurity firms that make software allowing authorities to bypass encryption and other protections. The companies often argue that their tools help aid legitimate criminal investigations, but critics have said they’re often used by authoritarian

Visualizing All the Vacant Office Space in San Francisco

"And employing the framework we introduced last year, there is now 12.7 Salesforce Towers, or 747 Salesforce Tower floors, worth of empty office space spread across San Francisco, which is roughly enough space to accommodate between 98,000 (based on an average, pre-Covid, density) and 131,000 (a

MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.

"“Changing our societal priorities hardly needs to be a capitulation to grim necessity,” she said. “Human activity can be regenerative and our productive capacities can be transformed. In fact, we are seeing examples of that happening right now. Expanding those efforts now creates a world full of opportunity that

In bitcoin, Black entrepreneurs see a chance to rebuild generational wealth

“Building viable enterprises is possible "in a decentralized finance space," said Evans, who teaches law at Penn State and began studying and speaking on blockchain and crypto four years ago. "No one's standing in the way. There's no bank. There's no

Working from home might be worse for the environment than commuting

“In a white paper about the shift in energy consumption during the pandemic, Steve Cicala, an associate professor of economics at Tufts University who studies environmental and energy policy, wrote that in 2020, about a third of the U.S. workforce shifted to working from home due to the pandemic.

The ugly, geeky war for web privacy is playing out in the W3C

“The W3C is under siege by an insurgency that's thwarting browsers from developing new and important privacy protections for all web users. "They use cynical terms like: 'We're here to protect user choice' or 'We're here to protect the open

Funding To Black Startup Founders Quadrupled In Past Year, But Remains Elusive

“To be sure, much work remains to be done. Black startup entrepreneurs still received only a tiny fraction — 1.2 percent — of the record $147 billion in venture capital invested in U.S. startups through the first half of this year, Crunchbase numbers show. That compares with the more than

Adam Smith to Richard Spencer: Why Libertarians turn to the Alt-Right

"[It's] incredibly easy for the alt-right to reach out to libertarians; they’re both already literally speaking the same language. Socialists control the media? Swap ‘Socialists’ out for ‘Cultural Marxists’ and you’re halfway to becoming the new Richard Spencer. Hillary Clinton was clearly the social justice

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars by Grace Chan

I really enjoyed this short story in Clarkesworld about personas, fame, machine learning, and escape. [Link]

Apple founder Steve Wozniak backs right-to-repair movement

""We wouldn't have had an Apple had I not grown up in a very open technology world," Mr Wozniak, its co-founder with Steve Jobs in the 1970s, said." It shouldn't even be a question. [Link]