In San Francisco, a new generation of hackers is using these to disable self-driving vehicles. CC-licensed photo by Jacqui Brown on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 10 links for you. Unteachable. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
WhatsApp voice notes revolutionize farming in Senegal • Rest of World
Jack Thompson:
»
Ousmane Sambou, a farmer in Casamance in southern Senegal, relied on what he learned from his father and village elders to make a living until 2015, when a colleague introduced him to a local WhatsApp group. In it, users sent voice notes sharing the latest farming practices and tips for navigating environmental challenges.
Sambou has since joined six other farming-related WhatsApp groups, and spends anywhere between 30 minutes and three hours a day exchanging voice notes with the other members. “We share our experiences and challenges, and learn about practices like organic fertilizers and how to fight pests without chemicals,” he told Rest of World. WhatsApp has changed the way Sambou farms, thanks to its voice notes feature.
In a country where nearly half the population cannot read or write, WhatsApp voice notes have become a vital tool for farmers to collaborate and access information in local languages to improve their produce, according to 15 WhatsApp groups that Rest of World monitored between May 29 and June 2, 2023.
Low literacy in Senegal is as much of an intrinsic linguistic issue as an educational one, according to Sophie Nick, project engineer at Com4Dev, a social engineering organization that aims to improve development through communication innovations. “Across Africa, people function orally because the languages aren’t really written,” Nick told Rest of World. Even though French is the official language of Senegal, most people in the country speak Wolof, Pulaar, or Diola. These languages are primarily oral and not written, said Nick. Nor do they have a phone keyboard adapted to the languages’ intricacies.
«
Wonderful reporting. An iconic piece of research in 2007 found that owning mobile phones made a significant different to fishermen’s income. (Revisited in 2013.)
unique link to this extract
Twitter owes ex-employees $500 million in severance, lawsuit claims • Reuters via CNBC
»
Twitter on Wednesday was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of refusing to pay at least $500m in promised severance to thousands of employees who were laid off after Elon Musk acquired the company.
Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s employee benefits programs as its “head of total rewards” before she was laid off in January, filed the proposed class action in San Francisco federal court.
McMillian claims that under a severance plan created by Twitter in 2019, most workers were promised two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for each full year of service if they were laid off. Senior employees such as McMillian were owed six months of base pay, according to the lawsuit.
«
Seems like the unfair dismissal/lack of payment story gets bigger and more problematic for Twitter. Though lawsuits like these tend not to move with alacrity.
unique link to this extract
When AI overrules the nurses caring for you • WSJ
Lisa Bannon:
»
Melissa Beebe, an oncology nurse, relies on her observation skills to make life-or-death decisions. A sleepy patient with dilated pupils could have had a hemorrhagic stroke. An elderly patient with foul-smelling breath could have an abdominal obstruction.
So when an alert said her patient in the oncology unit of UC Davis Medical Center had sepsis, she was sure it was wrong. “I’ve been working with cancer patients for 15 years so I know a septic patient when I see one,” she said. “I knew this patient wasn’t septic.”
The alert correlates elevated white blood cell count with septic infection. It wouldn’t take into account that this particular patient had leukemia, which can cause similar blood counts. The algorithm, which was based on artificial intelligence, triggers the alert when it detects patterns that match previous patients with sepsis. The algorithm didn’t explain its decision.
Hospital rules require nurses to follow protocols when a patient is flagged for sepsis. While Beebe can override the AI model if she gets doctor approval, she said she faces disciplinary action if she’s wrong. So she followed orders and drew blood from the patient, even though that could expose him to infection and run up his bill. “When an algorithm says, ‘Your patient looks septic,’ I can’t know why. I just have to do it,” said Beebe, who is a representative of the California Nurses Association union at the hospital.
As she suspected, the algorithm was wrong. “I’m not demonizing technology,” she said. “But I feel moral distress when I know the right thing to do and I can’t do it.”
Artificial intelligence and other high-tech tools, though nascent in most hospitals, are raising difficult questions about who makes decisions in a crisis: the human or the machine?
«
“Could expose him to infection and run up his bill”. Ah, American healthcare, the gift that keeps on taking. (The full article should be free to read via the link.)
unique link to this extract
Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 almost makes Apple’s iPad multitasking work • The Verge
David Pierce:
»
When Stage Manager first launched last year as part of iPadOS 16, I turned the setting off as fast as I could and never looked back. It was a half-hearted attempt to build a better multitasking system, with too many quirks and complications that all added up to more clutter and confusion on my iPad.
But this year is different. Ish. I’ve been using the iPadOS 17 beta for a while ahead of the public beta that’s available today, and I have good news: Stage Manager feels much closer to the multitasking system Apple always said it was trying to build. It’s still nowhere near perfect, and Stage Manager still interacts with apps and even other iPad features in odd and confusing ways. But for the first time, I can at least say the iPad is a half-decent multitasking machine.
The upgrade that matters is a simple one: instead of having your windows at only a couple of set sizes and orientations, you can now make most apps as tall or short and skinny or wide as you’d like, and you can place them almost anywhere on the screen. Sometimes it looks bad! That’s okay! Choice is a good thing.
As you move a window around the screen, it still sometimes subtly bounces back to the center or the edge, and there are some places — such as way into the corner — that you can’t put an app at all. But it’s close enough. I can have a bunch of small, iPhone-sized windows haphazardly strewn about my screen.
«
So it sounds like they’ve changed it so you can resize windows? Like you can on a Mac?
unique link to this extract
San Francisco protestors are disabling autonomous vehicles using traffic cones • TechSpot
Rob Thubron:
»
Anti-car activists have come up with a novel and effective way of disabling driverless vehicles owned by Waymo and Cruise in San Francisco: placing traffic cones on their hoods. It’s the work of a group called Safe Streets Rebel, which has launched a protest dubbed “Week of Cone.”
Safe Streets Rebel’s protest comes after automatic vehicles were blamed for incidents including crashing into a bus and running over a dog. City officials in June said there have been ninety incidents involving Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise vehicles since January.
Adding to Safe Streets Rebel’s anger is an upcoming ruling by the California public utilities commission that will decide whether autonomous vehicle companies can expand both the number of vehicles they operate in San Francisco and robotaxis’ hours of operation, from the middle of the night to 24/7.
A video from the group that has gained almost 5 million views on Twitter points out that AVs block buses, emergency vehicles, and everyday traffic. It also claims that they’re partnering with police to record everyone all the time without anyone’s consent. And, most importantly, they require streets designed for cars, not people or transit.
The video goes on to explain how to disable one of the vehicles by simply finding a traffic cone, which are “everywhere,” and gently placing it on the hood – but make sure the car is empty first.
«
The question I have is, how did they discover that this would disable the car – that it would make it think there was an unavoidable obstacle directly in front of them? Put like that it sounds obvious, but all great discoveries have that property.
unique link to this extract
‘It’s absolutely guaranteed’: the best and worst case scenarios for sea level rise • The Guardian
Karen McVeigh:
»
Not only is dangerous sea level rise “absolutely guaranteed”, but it will keep rising for centuries or millennia even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, experts say.
Rising seas are one of the most severe consequences of a heating climate that are already being felt.
Since the 1880s, mean sea level globally has already risen by 16cm to 21cm (6-8in). Half of that rise has happened over the past three decades.
It is accelerating, too: the ocean rose more than twice as fast (4.62mm a year) in the most recent decade (2013-22) than it did in 1993-2002, the first decade of satellite measurements, when the rate was 2.77mm a year. Last year was a new high, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It is no coincidence that the past eight years were the warmest on record.
The numbers might seem small. Even 4.62mm is just half a centimetre a year. So why did the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warn in February that the increase in the pace of sea level rise threatens a “mass exodus” of entire populations on a biblical scale?
Part of the problem is the that even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases immediately – which it will not – sea levels would continue to rise. Even in the best-case scenario, it’s too late to hold back the ocean.
«
Rising heat underground is sinking chicago ever so slightly • The New York Times
Raymond Zhong:
»
Underneath downtown Chicago’s soaring Art Deco towers, its multilevel roadways and its busy subway and rail lines, the land is sinking, and not only for the reasons you might expect.
Since the mid-20th century, the ground between the city surface and the bedrock has warmed by 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit on average, according to a new study out of Northwestern University. All that heat, which comes mostly from basements and other underground structures, has caused the layers of sand, clay and rock beneath some buildings to subside or swell by several millimeters over the decades, enough to worsen cracks and defects in walls and foundations.
“All around you, you have heat sources,” said the study’s author, Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, walking with a backpack through Millennium Station, a commuter rail terminal underneath the city’s Loop district. “These are things that people don’t see, so it’s like they don’t exist.”
It isn’t just Chicago. In big cities worldwide, humans’ burning of fossil fuels is raising the mercury at the surface. But heat is also pouring out of basements, parking garages, train tunnels, pipes, sewers and electrical cables and into the surrounding earth, a phenomenon that scientists have taken to calling “underground climate change.”
Rising underground temperatures lead to warmer subway tunnels, which can cause overheated tracks and steam-bath conditions for commuters. And, over time, they cause tiny shifts in the ground beneath buildings, which can induce structural strain, whose effects aren’t noticeable for a long time until suddenly they are.
“Today, you’re not seeing that problem,” said Asal Bidarmaghz, a senior lecturer in geotechnical engineering at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “But in the next 100 years, there is a problem. And if we just sit for the next 100 years and wait 100 years to solve it, then that would be a massive problem.”
«
(Thanks G for the link.)
unique link to this extract
Tests to assess newborns’ health not effective for BAME babies in UK • The Guardian
Anna Bawden:
»
Tests to assess newborn babies’ health are not effective for non-white children and should be replaced, according to the NHS Race and Health Observatory.
In the UK, neonatal death rates among black and Asian newborns are much higher than for white babies.
A review of neonatal tests by Sheffield Hallam university, commissioned by the Race and Health Observatory, found that the Apgar score, used at birth to assess a newborn’s health, can give misleading scores for BAME babies, because it was developed for white European babies in 1952.
Tests involve assessing the baby’s skin tone, heart rate, reflexes, muscle tone and breathing within a few minutes of birth.
The review analysed about 200 studies and more than 80 policies about assessing newborn babies’ health. Researchers also conducted interviews with 33 healthcare professionals and 24 parents.
They found that some guidance on a healthy newborn’s skin tone still referred to terms such as “pink” “blue” “pale” or “pallor”, with no reference to alternative descriptions for black, Asian and other skin types.
«
Rather like the oxygen sensor that doesn’t function effectively on darker skin. We forget how, well, Caucasian a lot of modern medicine is.
unique link to this extract
Global PC shipments continue to decline in the second quarter of 2023 • IDC
»
Global PC shipments declined 13.4% year over year during the second quarter of 2023 (2Q23), according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. This was the sixth consecutive quarter of contraction brought on by macroeconomic headwinds, weak demand from both the consumer and commercial sectors, and a shift in IT budgets away from device purchases. Despite the poor showing, the market performed better than forecast for the quarter.
The overall weak demand has caused inventory levels to remain above normal for longer than expected. This includes finished systems at the channel level, as well as the supply chain. So far, no PC maker has been immune to the challenges presented by the market. Except for Apple and HP Inc., all the leading companies experienced double-digit declines during the quarter. But Apple benefited from a favorable year-over-year comparison as the company suffered supply issues during 2Q22 due to COVID-related shutdowns within the supply chain. Meanwhile, HP has faced an oversupply of inventory in the past year and is finally approaching normalized levels of inventory, allowing its growth rate to shine during this downturn.
«
Down from 71.1m in 2Q 2022 to 61.6m in 2Q 2023. Apple the only company (IDC thinks) that showed growth, though that’s down to having had a bad comparator quarter a year back.
I wonder how the profitability of the industry is going. Covid probably helped everything for a while. Now that’s over, though, and the winds are much colder.
unique link to this extract
Why we don’t recommend Ring cameras • WIRED
Adrienne So:
»
When you set up a Ring camera, you are automatically enrolled in the Neighbors service. (You can go into the Ring app’s settings and toggle off the Neighbors feed integration and notifications, but the onus is on you.) Neighbors, which is also a stand-alone app, shows you an activity feed from all nearby Ring camera owners, with posts about found dogs, stolen hoses, and a Safety Report that shows how many calls for service—violent or nonviolent—were made in the past week. It also provides an outlet for public safety agencies, like local police and fire departments, to broadcast information widely.
But it also allows Ring owners to send videos they’ve captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement. This is a feature unique to Ring—even Nextdoor removed its Forward to Police feature in 2020, which allowed Nextdoor users to forward their own safety posts to local law enforcement agencies. If a crime has been committed, law enforcement should obtain a warrant to access civilian video footage.
Multiple members of WIRED’s Gear team have spoken to Ring over the years about this feature. The company has been clear it’s what customers want, even though there’s no evidence that more video surveillance footage keeps communities safer. Instead, Neighbors increases the possibility of racial profiling. It makes it easier for both private citizens and law enforcement agencies to target certain groups for suspicion of crime based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, or country of origin.
…We believe this feature should not exist.
«
Not only that, but they think the hardware’s lousy.
unique link to this extract
| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: Ben, a barrister, writes on the matter of the latest Right To Be Forgotten ruling:
“The ECtHR and the European Court of Justice (the ECJ – an organ of the EU) are two different things: the UK’s compliance with the case law of the ECtHR (which decides cases using the ECHR, not EU treaties or Regulations such as GDPR) comes from non-EU treaty obligations and the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998. Brexit does nothing to oust the applicability of caselaw from the ECtHR.
The full decision is here should you want to see / read it. Although the Court refers to GDPR, the decision is not based upon it; it is based on the court’s interpretation of Article 10 of the ECHR.
In short, it applies here irrespective of us leaving the EU.”
Thanks Ben for the clarification. (I dislike the ruling even more now.)
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 