The idea that people will happily return to the office post-pandemic isn’t borne out by the data, an economist points out. CC-licensed photo by Mark Hillary on Flickr.
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There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.
A selection of 10 links for you. Actually, it is an email rather than a meeting. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Rapper Pras’ lawyer used AI to defend him in criminal case. It did not go well • Ars Technica
Jon Brodkin:
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After being convicted of federal crimes related to a foreign influence campaign, rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel says he should get a new trial because his lawyer “used an experimental AI program to write his closing argument.” In a motion for a new trial filed Monday, the Fugees rapper’s new lawyers say Michel’s previous representation used “an experimental AI program in which they had a financial stake to write the closing argument, resulting in a frivolous and ineffectual closing argument.”
Michel was represented at trial by defense counsel David Kenner, who is accused of failing to provide a cogent defense and misattributing two songs to the Fugees. The allegations about Kenner’s use of AI are reminiscent of a previous incident in which a lawyer admitted using ChatGPT to help write court filings that cited six nonexistent cases invented by the artificial intelligence tool.
According to the motion for a new trial, “Kenner failed to familiarize himself with the charged statutes, causing him to overlook critical weaknesses in the Government’s case,” and he “did not understand the facts or allegations.”
Kenner “outsourced trial preparations to inexperienced contract attorneys who worked for an e-discovery vendor, Business Intelligence Associates, Inc. (BIA),” the motion said. His trial team included BIA co-founder Alon Israely, “a non-practicing attorney with no white collar or even litigation experience.” The motion said that Kenner generated his closing argument “using a proprietary prototype AI program in which he and Alon Israely appear to have had an undisclosed financial stake.”
“Far from hiding this fact, Kenner boasted about it after Michel was convicted, stating; ‘The system turned hours or days of legal work into seconds,'” the motion said.
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It is amazing that we now have two cases of American lawyers thinking that a chatbot is better at researching and writing legal topics than humans who have trained for years.
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Who’s responsible for the Gaza hospital blast? Here’s why it’s hard to know what’s real • WIRED
David Gilbert:
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For experts in the OSINT [open source intelligence] community who have spent years working on incidents just like this, the confusion and misinformation were frustrating. Figuring out what happened takes time, and the deluge of misinformation only made that work more difficult.
“It’s because we are trying to track a rocket, at night, via a couple of livestreams, a security camera, and a phone camera,” an OSINT researcher, who posts anonymously on social media using the handle OSINTtechnical, tells WIRED. “Oh, and there are bad actors purposely trying to muddy the waters. I would say we still have an acceptable number of resources to see into Gaza, but it takes some time to parse everything to a complete degree.”
The researcher adds that their job was made infinitely more difficult by media outlets running with the claim that Israel was responsible. “That blows everything out of the water,” OSINTtechnical says.
[Bellingcat senior researcher Kolina] Koltai says she began trying to figure out what had happened within hours of the incident, before her colleagues in Europe took over today. Despite being among the first to begin investigating the incident, as of Wednesday afternoon Bellingcat had still not confirmed how the attack happened or who was responsible.
Similarly, the BBC Verify team published its analysis of the explosion based on the available information but has been unable to conclude what exactly happened. A number of videos captured with mobile phones and circulated on social media appear to show the moment of the explosion from different angles. A livestream operated by Al Jazeera shows two flashes, one further away from the camera and one much closer, which some claim shows the rocket launching, followed by the explosion. Footage captured this morning shows the hospital’s parking lot, and what appears to be a small impact crater. Footage shows damage to a number of cars, but only minor damage to the exterior of the hospital building.
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Ironically despite everything, Twitter is still the place where if you’re judicious, you can find the best early information. In this case, a thread before 0800 on Wednesday by Nathan Ruser pretty comprehensively, but carefully, dismantled the idea that this was an Israeli airstrike. (Read the thread on a single page.)
The volume of misinformation is, indeed, colossal. But when you’re panning for gold, you don’t put everything in your sample jar.
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EPA finds small planes’ lead pollution threatens human health • The Washington Post
Timothy Puko and Lori Aratani:
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The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced it has determined that lead emitted from airplanes is a danger to public health, opening the door for the agency’s first limits on lead fuel in aviation.
The move puts the Biden administration in the middle of a brewing fight over how long airports — particularly smaller ones — can continue selling leaded gasoline, despite the health hazards from this powerful neurotoxin. More than 170,000 smaller planes, known as piston-engine aircraft, still use leaded gasoline, according to the EPA, and there is an ongoing dispute about how quickly this form of fuel can be phased out at thousands of airports nationwide.
The agency first proposed the move last year. It is a formal step known as an “endangerment finding,” and it now obligates the agency under the Clean Air Act to set new rules on what aircraft engines can emit.
“The science is clear: exposure to lead can cause irreversible and lifelong health effects in children,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “Aircraft that use leaded fuel are the dominant source of lead emissions in our air.”
Now that the EPA has made its determination, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it will move forward with rulemaking aimed at controlling or eliminating aviation lead emissions from piston-engine aircraft.
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Gee, FAA, took you long enough. I linked to a Politico piece back in February that pointed out this absurd exception, which allows planes to “cropdust with a neurotoxin”, as the article put it. (A search reveals that the topic of lead poisoning comes up surprisingly often. Thanks Adrian M for the pointer.)
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Trust & Safety Tycoon
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Trust & Safety Tycoon is a game exploring the difficult choices and tradeoffs involved in managing a trust and safety team.
Created in association with the Atlantic Council’s Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web.
Built by Copia Gaming and Leveraged Play. Written & developed by Mike Masnick, Randy Lubin, and Leigh Beadon with generous support from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Try our other game, Moderator Mayhem.
If you’re interested in creating and commissioning games that explore the intersection of tech and policy, please contact us at gaming@copia.is
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Rather like SimCity, these games don’t have to be completely realistic to make a persuasive case that this takes a lot of juggling.
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X will begin charging new users $1 a year • Fortune
Kyle Robison:
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X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, and quote, according to a source familiar with the matter and later confirmed by the company.
The company will begin charging the fee on Tuesday for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines, marking one of the most significant changes to the social media platform since Elon Musk acquired the company nearly a year ago.
In a statement published shortly after Fortune reported the news of the $1 plan, X ‘s support account confirmed the details and described the move as a way to curb the prevalence of bots and spam on the platform, rather than a money-making endeavor. “This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform, and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver,” the company said.
The $1 annual charge is only for new users, and does not apply to existing users. It’s unclear if, or when, the payment plan will be expanded to users in other countries. The program is also different from X Premium, which offers extra features like “undo” and “edit” for posts for $8 a month.
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The choice of the Philippines is telling (though is New Zealand really a hotbed of spammers?). This will lose money on the payment processing, and make Twitter a target for credit card hacking if anyone does actually sign up. I think the spammers/hackers will simply focus on old dormant accounts and try to crack their passwords (I already see this being done), or hacking more active ones.
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One year post-acquisition, X traffic and monthly active users are in decline, report claims • TechCrunch
Sarah Perez:
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Despite proclamations from X CEO Linda Yaccarino that usage of the social network was at an all-time high this summer, a new report is throwing cold water on those claims, saying that X usage has actually declined on all fronts, across both web and mobile. According to data from market intelligence firm Similarweb, X’s global website traffic was down 14% year-over-year in September, and US traffic was down by 19%. On mobile devices in the US, performance had also declined 17.8% year-over-year, based on monthly active users on iOS and Android.
Although the US accounts for roughly a quarter of X’s web traffic, other countries also saw declines in web traffic, including the UK (-11.6%), France (-13.4%), Germany (-17.9%) and Australia (-17.5%).
The report notes that September was not just a fluke, either, as declines in usage were visible in long-term trends as well. When comparing the first nine months of 2023 with the same period in 2022, Simiarweb found X’s website traffic was down 11.6% year-over-year in the US and down by 7% worldwide. Mobile app usage in the U.S. was also down by 12.8% during that same period of time.
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Astonishing, I know. Other sources (on Threads) say that you can look at external data, such as DNS resolution, and also figure that Twitter’s traffic has dropped.
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The return-to-office movement is dead • The New York Times
Nicholas Bloom is a professor of economics at Stanford University:
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Working from home is here to stay. I can prove it with data — lots and lots of data showing that returning to the office (R.T.O.) is D.O.A.
A telling data point is the number tracking how many Americans swiped and tapped electronic cards to gain entry into their offices. This month, occupancy rates were at 50% of February 2020 levels. That is shocking — only half as many days are spent in the office compared with prepandemic times.
That number has flatlined not only in office buildings in San Francisco and New York but also in workplaces in Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Denver; and Philadelphia. Blue and red, inland and coastal, Northern and Southern workers who might have disagreed on pandemic-related behaviours like mask wearing and vaccine boosters have quietly united behind work-from-home habits throughout 2023.
Work-from-home levels aren’t as high as they were during the pandemic’s first peak in early 2020, when 62% of full-day paid work happened at home. People did begin filtering back to the office as the pandemic waned. But they did so only to a point: By December 2022, 29% of workdays were happening from home. There was a slight dip after the winter holidays to 27% in January 2023. But as of July, we’re back up at 31%.
…Hybrid work arrangements have killed the return-to-office hype. Employees equate a mix of working in the office and working from home to an 8% raise. They don’t have to deal with the daily hassle and costs of a commute. In fact, the process of getting to work is more despised by employees than the need to actually work.
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I was in London’s legal district the other day and was surprised by the number of “To Let” signs on offices.
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Apple developing ‘pad-like device’ that can update iPhone firmware while still sealed in the box • 9to5Mac
Chance Miller:
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In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple has a fix for this problem. The company has reportedly “developed a proprietary pad-like device” that can turn on and update an iPhone while it’s still in the box:
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Apple is planning a new system for its retail stores that will update the software on iPhones prior to sale. The company has developed a proprietary pad-like device that the store can place boxes of iPhones on top of. That system can then wirelessly turn on the iPhone, update its software and then power it back down — all without the phone’s packaging ever being opened. The company aims to begin rolling this out to its stores before the end of the year.
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As it stands now, iPhones are shipped from the factory with whatever build of iOS was available at that time. This means millions of iPhones out there ship with iOS versions that are multiple updates old by the time that phone arrives to the customer.
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There was a discussion about this on the latest Accidental Tech Podcast, where they were dubious about this, on the basis that even if the pad could wake the iPhone up, how would you be sure it was sufficiently charged to be able to install the software update? Trying to install on a low-power device could leave it bricked. However, the new phones do ship with the back near the top, theoretically in range of a powerful MagSafe/Qi charging connector, which would then (???) let it connect to an update server.
Though also see the next link…
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I’m charging my toothbrush with wireless power over distance—and it’s a trip • WIRED
Simon Hill:
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There are several good reasons why wireless power over distance has yet to take off, and why, even with proven examples, enough obstacles remain to encourage healthy skepticism. To simplify massively and pick just two: It is inefficient (much of the power transmitted is lost), and only relatively small amounts of energy are realistic with current limitations and safety in mind. Wi-Charge may be ahead of the competition on these points, but it is still not as efficient, as capable, nor as safe as a wired connection.
You can argue that inductive coupling is common, and we accept inefficiency where it brings convenience. The wireless chargers we use with our phones are not as efficient as cables, for example, and we connect to Wi-Fi rather than use Ethernet. But it’s hard to paint that as a good thing given the current climate crisis. If our power came from renewables, it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but we are not there yet. (For the record, I am lucky enough to have solar panels, and my energy pro, Octopus, delivers 100% renewable electricity, but I’m in the minority.)
There are scenarios where this technology can be an eco-friendly alternative. One of the few places wireless power over distance is already working is for electronic price tags (e-ink that shows pricing) in retail stores. It is far more environmentally friendly than disposable lithium coin batteries. Ditching the batteries in small devices could also reduce lithium demand and problematic e-waste. Even cables require mined resources and have an energy production cost.
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Safety is already dealt with, apparently. Wonder if anyone is doing the cost comparison of “energy saved by not mining a cable” with “energy lost over lifetime of wireless charging”. This, by the way, could be how Apple is charging those in-store iPhones while waking them up to install new OS versions.
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Free solar? Alex Honnold’s other mission • FT
Natalie Berry (who is a pretty good climber herself):
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Since the Oscar-winning success of Free Solo [which showed Alex Honnold climbing ropeless up Yosemite], Honnold’s profile has boomed, and with it, the impact of his foundation [which tackles energy poverty and climate change via solar technology projects].
Over the past three years, it has supported 48 partners in more than 20 countries and territories. In 2022, its grantmaking doubled thanks to a global community of corporate and individual supporters. Last October, it launched the Levine Impact Lab, an organisation that invests in grassroots social-impact and environmental organisations including Southside Blooms, which repurposes land in Chicago as solar flower farms, and employs disadvantaged youth in sustainable agriculture. The foundation is “using its platform to build a bridge between the wealthier philanthropic class and gritty grassroots leaders”, says Quilen Blackwell, founder of Southside Blooms.
This March, the foundation’s largest project launched in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico: the island’s first cooperatively managed solar microgrid, powering 14 small businesses with 10 days of outage back-up. Hurricanes frequently devastate the existing “super-unreliable, super-expensive” grid powered by US-imported diesel. Says Honnold: “It just feels good to help demonstrate that these other ways can work.”
Honnold donates around 33% of his income to the foundation. “Being a climber, I always have relatively clear goals and priorities, and I don’t need material things to do those things,” he says. Fellow professional climber and The Dawn Wall star Tommy Caldwell says of Honnold: “Despite, or possibly because of his pragmatic approach to life, Alex is the most charitable person I know.”
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A lot of climbers make their money doing the tricky building installations requiring “roped access work” because, of course, they’re familiar with ropes and safety. And they’re often big on the environment – unsurprisingly, one hopes.
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| • 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. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 