Utah had put its surveillance contract with Banjo on hold after learning that Patton had been a KKK member as a teenager, and had joined a group leader in a drive-by shooting. Patton had renounced his past and vowed that it didn’t affect his company’s practices, but Utah paused its use of the technology and launched an audit to verify that there wasn’t an algorithmic bias in its data gathering from cameras, call centers and emergency vehicles.
It’s not clear how Patton’s exit will influence Utah’s response, if at all. However, it theoretically eliminates the possibility that the history of Banjo’s founder will play a role in future projects. Not that this eliminates underlying concerns about the surveillance itself. Critics are still concerned that Banjo’s system has access to vast amounts of information in real time, and it’s not clear how well the company scrubs out personal data.
The decision to cancel San Diego Comic-Con 2020 surprised no one in light of COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to wait until 2021 to get a taste of that experience. The organizers announced (via Deadline) a Comic-Con @ Home event that will take place sometime this summer. Details of the event are scarce, but it’s clear that you’ll be streaming panels and trailers instead of queuing up for hours or booking overpriced hotel rooms.
The @ Home event isn’t completely shocking. It does, however, answer a question as to whether or not Comic-Con International would produce something resembling SDCC online or resign itself to hosting some trailers. The replacement for E3, Summer Game Fest, is more a loose collection of announcements — Comic-Con’s effort might be more focused.
Numerous countries have COVID-19 symptom and tracking apps, but the World Health Organization wants to fill in those gaps for the countries that are too stretched to develop their own software. The WHO’s Bernardo Mariano told Reuters in an interview that the outfit planned to release a symptoms assessment app worldwide later in May. Any government could release a customized version of the app, Mariano said, but the stock version will help countries that “do not have anything.”
The organization is also looking into adding contact tracing, and has talked to Apple and Google about using their joint tracking technology Legal and privacy issues have stopped the WHO from hopping aboard, Mariano said. Apple and Google have both promised a decentralized system that keeps data anonymous, bu there are still concerns companies might misuse data to turn a profit later.
Twitter might let you know if you ever get retweets worth checking out in the future. Jane Manchun Wong, who reverse engineers apps to unearth experimental features, has discovered that the platform is testing a counter that shows the number of retweets you get that come with comments. It’ll be totally separate from the current retweets counter, but it will live in the same line underneath your post.
Twitter is testing to show a separate “x Retweets with comments” row
They are also implementing the tabbed Retweets page for Android, so that’s pretty sweet 🙂 pic.twitter.com/PBE9cgvPSX
In addition, Twitter is also experimenting with a tabbed retweets page for Android devices. It lists all the retweets you get and separates those with comments from those without, making it easy to check if there’s somebody you can interact with. Twitter tests a lot of potential features all the time, though, so it remains to be seen if this one will make its way to the masses. Just a few days ago, the Twitter Support account also revealed that it’s testing a new prompt for iOS, which gives you the option to change your reply before it’s published if it uses potentially harmful language.
Still, it’s the end of an era. Schmidt ran Google during its rapid growth from a search startup to a tech colossus that branched out into smartphones, email and numerous other fields. Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired him to offer Google serious business credibility and leadership, and to that extent he succeeded.
He attracted plenty of criticism, though. Schmidt downplayed privacy concerns during his CEO stint, effectively arguing that you had nothing to fear if you had nothing to hide. His position on Apple’s board raised eyebrows when Android became public. He made some astute predictions for the future, including the rise of AI, but he’s also known for overestimating Google’s chances of success in other categories. Remember how he believed most TVs would use Google TV by summer 2012? Google became a powerhouse under Schmidt, but some of its lingering privacy and product issues began during his stint.
The feature isn’t available for Android Auto yet, although that’s not surprising given that Porsche only recently began adding Google’s platform to its cars. All Track Precision users should see 100 new tracks added to the pre-defined list, giving you 300 courses around the world with accurate mapping data. You can create custom maps using your phone’s GPS if a local circuit isn’t available yet.
The updated app is free, although you’ll need to meet fairly specific requirements to use it. You’ll not only need a Boxster, Cayman, 911 or GT car with at least Porsche Communication Management 4.0, you’ll need both the Connect Plus and Sport Chrono Package add-ons. If you’re in that position, though, you may have just what you need to improve your performance without either an elaborate phone setup or dedicated telemetry gear.
The entrepreneur has made his displeasure with the Fremont shutdown clear on more than one occasion, including on Twitter and in a profanity-laced outburst in an earning call where he called lockdown safety measures an attack on freedom.
We’ve asked the company if it can elaborate on Musk’s statements. If he follows through, however, it could significantly affect the automotive and technology industries. It’d leave California without a major car maker, as Musk suggested, while boosting Tesla’s presence in Nevada. It could hurt Tesla’s ability to hire new staff in the process, mind you. The company has poached staff from tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area that might not have needed to relocate at all. While this does reduce the chances of companies ‘stealing’ Tesla employees, the EV maker could have a harder time recruiting workers without immediate access to Silicon Valley talent.
Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.
Whatever you think of Doom Eternal right now, id and Bethesda are determined to spice it up going forward. They’ve hinted at what’s coming next for the hellish shooter, starting with a preview of the game’s first free update. The simply titled Update 1 release will tweak core mechanics in a number of ways, including “Empowered Demons” that throw a wildcard into single-player games. If a demon kills a player in the story mode, Doom tosses that creature into someone else’s game with upgraded stats. You may face a rude surprise in the middle of a seemingly ordinary level, although you will get bonus supplies and experience points if you avenge your fellow player.
Update 1 will also refine the multiplayer Battlemode with Denuvo Anticheat protection, an updated tutorial, Echelon Leveling for players who’ve reached the cap and a death report to help you out in the middle of a fight. And if you’re irked by some of the gameplay in solo story play, you’ll be glad to know there will be tweaks to “balance concerns and annoyances.”
Excerpted from Keep Calm and Log On: Your Handbook for Surviving the Digital Revolution by Gillian “Gus” Andrews. Reprinted with Permission from The MIT PRESS. Copyright 2020.
Who’s in the Audience? Would Your Followers Get Mad?
Broadcasting makes a lot of changes to how we communicate, especially when we’re suddenly speaking to more people who are different from each other. This often means changing the message we put out there, to avoid upsetting some people. And that can keep us from saying things we really need to say.
When people craft messages for a large audience—as they do in the advertising and PR industries—the tone they use in those messages is different than it would be for a small group. A person communicating to a large group of people will try to make their message easier for everyone to understand. They may work to avoid offending sub-groups in the larger audience. If they’re broadcasting in mass media, they’ll also work to avoid offending advertisers.
In television and radio, the need to be sensitive to the presence of children, elders, and potentially offended groups led to what are often called standards of decency. It’s one reason many countries set rules that tell broadcasters when they can and cannot air sexual or violent content, or use obscenities. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission grants broadcast licenses. When the FCC fines broadcasters for nudity or cussing, they usually do so because of complaints from the public. So to some extent, offended members of the community drive FCC censorship.
The “wardrobe malfunction” incident at the 2004 Super Bowl (during which the singer Janet Jackson’s breast was briefly exposed by Justin Timberlake) triggered 540,000 complaints to the FCC. The Parents’ Television Council, a nonprofit watchdog agency, led the charge, demanding that TV be made safe for children. The FCC seized that moment to crack down on numerous other broadcasters, including fining the Fox network for running an episode of the animated series Family Guy that showed baby Stewie’s naked butt.
But knowing that angry letters from the public may be coming, broadcasters often self-censor even before the FCC comes down on them. Viacom and Clear Channel blacklisted Janet Jackson’s songs without being threatened. That’s when the radio personality Howard Stern, who had been fined plenty of times for indecency over the years, decided to flee from the terrestrial airwaves, later signing a deal to move his show to satellite radio. And the self-censorship effects went even further: after the wardrobe malfunction incident, ABC insisted it would air the movie Saving Private Ryan but cut its graphic war scene and expletives, even though the movie had previously been broadcast in full with no complaint from either the FCC or the PTC.
Who Are You “Singing” To?
Self-censorship based on “decency” limits the range of things that can be said in public. And there are parallels when we broadcast over social media.
My friend Steph explains that the difference between broadcasting and talking one-on-one is like the difference between singing on stage and singing a lullaby. You change how you sing, particularly how loud you sing. You wouldn’t do one in place of the other—you’d frustrate the audience by being hard to hear, or you’d wake the baby.
This type of “using the wrong style at the wrong time” is obvious when people you know mix up their communication styles on social media. Most of us have probably cringed when someone revealed something too private in public, or treated a friendly conversation as a place to advertise. That cringe comes from our sense that different kinds of conversations have their place. Those who post something we find cringeworthy have not matched their way of speaking to our sense of who they’re speaking to. We may have called someone out for this, or heaven forbid, been called out ourselves.
Human beings have always had different ways of speaking to their peers, leaders, elders, or children. The tone of voice and the things that we say to these people just aren’t the same! And when someone uses the tone of voice with an elder that they would with a child, that elder might take offense. There might be consequences for the speaker.
If you’ve done the delicate dance of posting to Facebook—when you know your grandma, your drinking buddies, the kids you babysit, and possibly your next employer can all read what you post—you have a gut feeling for how to alter a message for broadcast. What you’re doing to walk that fine line is like what broadcast TV did for years: producing content for the widest possible audience.
Social media are really unusual in human history when it comes to social groups—they’re more like your city hall or national political conversation than they are like your club, church, nuclear family, or group of friends. They’re huge forums where everyone comes together, not small places where people with common interests have conversations.
Human societies have long had separate public and private spaces. (Here I use “public” to include the 150 to 290 person groups I mentioned earlier. When I say small or private groups, I mean small—less than a dozen people.) Sometimes “privacy” has been the difference between families and everyone else. Sometimes private spaces have been gendered, with women and men hanging out separately, or queer folks finding their own protective spaces to speak honestly with each other. Or they’ve been conversations only with friends of our own age.
Small-group conversations don’t have the same purpose in our lives as broadcasting information, or even reading the news or watching TV. They’re for soothing hurts, recognizing personal successes, assuaging doubts.
The huge forums of social media are often uncomfortable because we haven’t all agreed on what their purpose is. Scholars have called the lumping-together of everyone we know “context collapse,” meaning that the usual separate contexts we do things in (attend religious services, flirt with strangers, care for kids) are suddenly all mixed together. Awkwardly.
It’s important for us all to ask: Are technologies allowing us to speak to different groups of people we know separately, and speak to them in different ways?
One problem with broadcasting on social media is that the careful choices we usually make when speaking publicly can trample all over our need for private spaces with specific purposes. I’ll give you some examples of how this could play out.
We may go one of a couple ways when we broadcast and are at risk of offending people. The first way is the cringeworthy route. We all know people who just go the no-filters route and say whatever’s on their mind, no matter where they are or who’s around. In some cases, we might admire such people for saying what’s on EVERYONE’S mind—but we don’t always want to be them, because sometimes their mouths get them into trouble.
Or we may take the self-censoring route—the one that TV and radio have traditionally had to take—in broadcasting to a mass audience. And that’s where this gets problematic. Because social media put us out in public, we may not speak up when we’re struggling, worried that our next job or a college recruiter might see and limit our options in life. We may suppress new aspects of our lives we are exploring, like our sexuality or spirituality, which could benefit from talking to supportive others, because we are worried about the response from our church or family. Self-censorship hurts our capacity to grow and heal.
This week we’re asking you for answers. Earlier we asked you to submit your user reviews of the Joy-Con controllers that come with Nintendo’s handheld Switch gaming system. Now we want to hear what you’ve done to fix the flaws that many users have encountered with the devices — be it a Bluetooth connection problem, or the more common ‘drift’ that causes the thumb sticks to move items on screen independent of the user’s input, we want to know what you did to fix it and get back to gaming.
Weigh in with your advice in the comments — and feel free to send your own questions along to ask@engadget.com!
