Making police footage requests public is a positive move, but privacy advocates say Amazon’s security camera brand needs to go further
By Jared Newman
At the very least, Amazon seems to be listening.
After years of criticism from civil liberties groups and privacy advocates, Amazon will no longer let police privately ask users of its Ring products such as smart doorbells to share video footage their cameras have captured. Instead, police will have to make those requests in public via Ring’s Neighbors app, where anyone — including people who don’t own any Ring products — can see them.
Amazon is also setting some boundaries on what police can ask for in the first place. They can’t seek footage from longer than…
Targeting different sources of mental fatigue can help make your time away from work be more restorative
By Art Markman
Over the past decade, it has become clearer to many that being “on” 24/7/365 is not a recipe for success. Discussions about work-life balance and the need to take vacations are signs that we understand that getting away from work is important for mental and physical health.
It’s useful to dig a little more into what you’re trying to accomplish with your downtime, though. The more you understand about what you’re trying to achieve, the easier it becomes to recognize when you might need to take a little extra time away from work. …
A series of audits find the Everything Store’s algorithms recommending falsehoods about the coronavirus, vaccines, and more
By Alex Pasternack
Search for “vaccines” on Amazon’s bookstore, and a banner encourages shoppers to “learn more” about COVID-19, with a link to the Centers for Disease Control. But the text almost vanishes amid the eye-catching book covers spreading out below, many of which carry Amazon’s orange “bestseller” badge.
One top-ranked book that promises “the other side of the story” of vaccine science is #1 on Amazon’s list for “Health Policy.” Next to it, smiling infants grace the cover of the top-selling book in “Teen Health,” co-authored by an Oregon pediatrician whose license was suspended last year over an approach…
Here’s how to work with your colleagues feeling emotionally drained from the pandemic
By Eddie Medina
I feel depleted. I can’t come up for air. I’m just going through the motions. I don’t know how long I can keep this up.
This is languishing in the workforce. If you’re leading people — if your business depends on people performing well — ignore it at your peril.
By now, many know languishing as the “meh” in our COVID-19-narrowed lives, that feeling of empty stagnation at the core of an emotionally draining year. But it isn’t a new concept. Based on BetterUp’s pre–pandemic research, it impacts up to 55% of employees.
A year later, the empty black boxes still aren’t enough
By Jeff Beer
On its face, it was a simple message of solidarity and support. In white text over a black background, L’Oreal Paris posted to Instagram, “Speaking out is worth it,” as well as a blank black square. Along with millions of people a year ago today, the global cosmetics giant was participating in #BlackoutTuesday, in which users filled social feeds with black squares as a sign of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
The pretext was about speaking up against racism. But for many of the more than 950 brands that posted a black square, it amounted…
The managing editor of InHerSight asks: “Ever send a too-brisk email and had someone call you ‘aggressive’ or ‘abrasive?’ I promise it’s not your tone that was the real issue.”
By Beth Castle
I’m not editing my emails anymore.
I’ll fix the typos and adjust for clarity. Then I’m hitting send. No more combing the email for one too many exclamation points, no more hovering over “just” a little too long, and no more overthinking. The email has got to go.
Women, you know what I’m talking about. A common career hack touted to us is the email audit — a painstaking scan of every message we send to ensure the tone and punctuation are authoritative enough to be taken seriously. We’ve been socialized since birth to apologize for being…
The tech giant has expressed an ambition to transform education with artificial intelligence, raising fresh ethical questions
By Ben Williamson
When Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company’s annual I/O Developers Conference on May 18, 2021, he made two announcements suggesting Google is now the world’s most powerful organization in education. Opening the livestreamed keynote from the Mountain View campus gardens, Pichai celebrated how Google had been able to “help students and teachers continue learning from anywhere” during the pandemic.
Minutes later, he announced Google’s new AI language platform, a central part of the company’s long-term AI strategy, with a specific use-case example from education. …
Politicians on both sides have argued that Big Tech has gotten too big. Amazon’s proposed acquisition of a movie studio tests their rhetoric.
By Nicole LaPorte
In Tuesday’s announcement of Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM — the historic film studio behind the Rocky, Legally Blonde, and James Bond franchises — Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, naturally dropped two major Hollywood buzzwords.
“The real financial value behind this deal,” Hopkins said, “is the treasure trove of” — ding-ding-ding — “IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality” — ding-ding-ding — “storytelling.”
Yes, in the latest proposed media merger…
Weapons systems that think for themselves remain in their infancy, but geopolitical pressures and mistrust may force them into use prematurely
By Mark Sullivan
One of the Pentagon’s primary jobs is anticipating what the wars of the future will look like so that it can allocate the resources necessary to make sure the U.S. has the edge in those battles. When people in the defense industry talk about the tools of future war, they usually mention applications of AI, autonomous weaponry, and a very different role for warm-blooded human beings during battle.
These technologies are in their early stages of maturity; defense forces don’t yet understand the best ways to deploy them in battle. …
From work-from-home culture to cryptocurrency’s mainstreaming, many trends are bolstering the work of ransomware criminals. And there are no easy fixes.
By Rob Pegoraro
Ransomware has grown fouler than ever, but it’s also grown up. The practice of using malware to encrypt files on a victim’s devices and then demanding a ransom payment for unlocking them has advanced far beyond its origins as a nuisance for individual users.
These days, it’s a massively profitable business that has spawned its own ecosystem of partner and affiliate firms. And as a succession of security experts made clear at the RSA Conference last week, we remain nowhere near developing an equivalent of a vaccine for this online plague.
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