New cars sold in Europe (and the UK) now have automatic speed limiters, but they can be turned off – for now. CC-licensed photo by John Briody on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Scream if you want to go faster. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Big Tech feels the heat over AI concerns • FT
Darren Dodd:
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Microsoft has given up its seat as an observer on the board of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, following noises from regulators about Big Tech’s plans. Apple, which plans to integrate ChatGPT into its devices, has done likewise.
Jonathan Kanter, the top US antitrust enforcer, told the Financial Times last month that he was examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape” on concerns that the already dominant tech giants would take control of the market. The biggest example to date has been Microsoft’s $13bn investment in OpenAI, which came with rights to the start-up’s intellectual property and a share of its profits, although stopped short of an outright acquisition.
Chipmakers are also being hit by US export controls on selling AI processors to Chinese customers. Such is the demand however, that even if companies such as Nvidia are not allowed to sell their high-end chips, huge amounts of sales can still be made from products that fall outside of the restrictions.
Big Tech is also turning its attention to the problems caused by the huge power demands of AI as the industry struggles to keep its climate promises. Microsoft yesterday announced a carbon credit deal with Occidental Petroleum that would allow it to offset emissions by paying Occidental to have the carbon removed from the atmosphere and stored underground.
Microsoft said in May that its emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, mainly from the construction of data centres, while Google last week admitted that its emissions had increased by almost half since 2019 from the building of power-intensive infrastructure to support AI.
In the meantime, the flurry of AI deal activity continues. AMD today announced the $665m acquisition of Finnish startup Silo AI as the US chipmaker tries to keep up with market leader Nvidia.
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Both Apple and Microsoft giving up board seats as observers at OpenAI is a quite the move: there’s a quiet implication that OpenAI may be toxic. Of course Microsoft says, in its letter giving up its seat, that it’s because OpenAI is fine and stable and doesn’t need looking after. Somehow that’s not persuasive.
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AI finds that AI is great in new garbage research from Tony Blair Institute • 404 Media
Emanuel Maiberg:
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A new paper from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, presented yesterday by the former Prime Minister himself, predicts that more than 40% of tasks performed by public-sector workers could be partly automated, saving a fifth of their time in aggregate, and potentially leading to a huge reduction in workforce and costs for the government.
The problem with this prediction, which was picked up by Politico, Techradar, Forbes, and others, is that it was made by ChatGPT after the authors of the paper admitted that making a prediction based on interviews with experts would be too hard. Basically, the finding that AI could replace humans at their jobs and radically change how the government works was itself largely made by AI.
“This is absurd—they might as well be shaking at Magic 8 ball and writing down the answers it displays,” Emily Bender, a professor and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, told me.
To make their assessment, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) researchers pulled data on 20,000 tasks performed by workers from O*NET, a database developed by the U.S Department of Labor which contains hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors on almost 1,000 occupations in the U.S. economy. The database includes “a rich set of variables that describe work and worker characteristics, including skill requirements,” according to its official site.
The researchers then wanted to assess which of these tasks, which are also performed by public sector workers in the UK, could be performed by AI, given the technology’s current capabilities.
Amazingly, the researchers concede that answering that question by talking to actual human experts across different fields would be hard, so they just asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 to answer the question instead.
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This is my extremely pained face that someone would think untrammeled generative AI gives answers to important questions.
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Conspiracy theory and nationalist groups embraced Reform UK at general election • Sky News
Tom Cheshire:
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Nigel Farage and Reform UK attracted a surge of election interest among conspiracy theory and nationalist groups, which have more than 15 million followers between them, on messaging app Telegram.
Some groups looked to sow the seeds of a “stolen election” narrative, similar to events in the US after Donald Trump’s defeat, and also attempted to recruit Reform UK voters to their cause.
And after the election, prominent accounts have continued to state there was “election interference” and that “Labour cheated”. Sky News asked Reform UK for a response but did not receive a reply before publication.
Sky News worked with Prose, an open source intelligence company, which analysed data from 10,000 Telegram accounts that regularly post conspiracist and extremist content, to identify accounts posting about the UK general election.
Compared to Labour and the Conservatives, Mr Farage’s return as leader of Reform UK appears to have attracted conspiracist groups, leading to a sharp and sustained surge of interest – with Mr Farage and Reform UK dominating the conversation.
In total, Prose found 938 unique Telegram chats, with 15.6 million followers between them, which posted 14,758 messages related to the UK election up until 25 June, of which 542 chats posted 5,239 messages about Mr Farage/Reform UK – more than any other party.
However, the true figure of actual users will be fewer, as this does not account for people who are members of multiple chats (if an account is a member of two chat groups it will be counted twice); some accounts will also be bots and some will also be based abroad.
Those groups were broadly supportive of Mr Farage and Reform UK.
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The difficulty is proving that these are voters, rather than just random people around the world – or Russian bots.
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Did Rishi Sunak’s green U-turn cost the Tories seats in Middle England? • Daily Mail Online
David Wilcock:
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The Tories leaked election votes to the left because of Rishi Sunak’s watering down of green measures introduced by Boris Johnson, a new poll suggested today.
Climate change was one of the top three reasons Labour and Lib Dem voters gave for supporting the parties on July 4, above housing and crime. And the analysis by More in Common found that even those who viewed it as less important also linked increasing generation of renewable energy to reducing the cost of living, the biggest factor driving voting at the election.
And in a sign of how green the country is, more than 70% of those polled backed Labour’s plans for GB Energy, a state-run company designed to fund the move to green power.
A majority of Tory and Reform voters (56% and 59% respectively) also said the state-run firm would be good for the country. It came as green Tories urged whoever replaces Mr Sunak as permanent Conservative leader later this year tacks back towards leading on environmental measures.
The Tories lost more than 30 seats to the Liberal Democrats in the so-called Blue Wall heartlands in the south, and also came second in Waveney Valley in Cambridgeshire behind the Greens.
Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, said the election result had been “devastating and painful” and the party needed to work out where it had gone wrong.
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It’s very hard to imagine that touting green policies would have worked for the Tories: they had been screwing things up (rivers, energy) for so long that people would surely have seen through any lip service paid to more green policies. Labour was able to change the policy restricting onshore wind farms (which are popular with people, when asked) by changing one footnote on its first morning in power. What kept the Tories from doing that? Nothing.
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PC recovery continues as the market grows 3% in the second quarter • IDC
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The PC market delivered its second quarter of growth following seven consecutive quarters of decline. According to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, worldwide shipments reached 64.9m units in the second quarter of 2024 (2Q24), representing year-over-year growth of 3.0%. While the overall market benefited from favorable comparisons to 2023, weak results in China continued to hold the market back. Excluding China, worldwide shipments grew more than 5% year over year.
“Make no mistake, the PC market just like other technology markets faces challenges in the near term due to maturity and headwinds,” said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Device Trackers. “However, two consecutive quarters of growth, combined with plenty of market hype around AI PCs and a less sexy but arguably more important commercial refresh cycle, seems to be what the PC market needed. The buzz is clearly around AI, but a lot is happening with non-AI PC purchasing to make this mature market show signs of positivity.”
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Intrigued by this splitting of the market into the “traditional” and “AI” PCs. Trouble is, the market is still down, and it’s hard to think that “AI PCs” are going to make a big difference. It’s still the same names on top: Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and either Acer or Asus in fifth place.
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Inside the ‘nightmare’ health crisis of a Texas bitcoin town • TIME
Andrew Chow:
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On an evening in December 2023, 43-year-old small business owner Sarah Rosenkranz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute; her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis; her skull throbbed. “It felt like my head was in a pressure vise being crushed,” she says. “That pain was worse than childbirth.”
Rosenkranz’s migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain, she says. This was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosenkranz’s five-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a “red beam behind her eardrums.”
It didn’t occur to Sarah that these symptoms could be linked. But in January 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses. A mother said her eight-year-old daughter was losing her hearing and fluids were leaking from her ears. Several women said they experienced fainting spells, including while driving on the highway. Others said they were wracked by debilitating vertigo and nausea, waking up in the middle of the night mid-vomit.
None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area—and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis.
Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least ten people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms.
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Speed limiters are now mandatory, but you can turn them off • evo
Sam Jenkins:
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Arriving alongside a range of new safety features destined for all new cars, mandatory speed limiters have come as part of the General Safety Regulation proposed by the European Commission, approved in 2019 by the European Parliament and all EU member states. While the UK is no longer in the EU, it is very likely that all UK cars will now receive the technology regardless, and it comes into force this month.
Dubbed Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), the limiters will use GPS data and/or traffic sign recognition cameras to determine the speed limit of the road a vehicle is travelling on. Engine power will then be limited to match this following an audible warning, preventing the car from exceeding the speed limit. It will be possible to override the system for the current journey by pushing hard on the throttle, however the system will be re-engaged every time a car is started.
If you think you can simply keep pressing a little harder on the throttle to break through the system, think again. ETSC also states that: ‘If the driver continues to drive above the speed limit for several seconds, the system should sound a warning for a few seconds and display a visual warning until the vehicle is operating at or below the speed limit again.’
A feature already seen on all new Volvos and models such as the Ford Focus, the speed limiters are also set to come alongside data loggers, autonomous emergency braking systems, lane keep assist, driver fatigue detection systems and other safety measures. It’s not all quite as bad as you may think, though, as the European Transport and Safety Council admits the system will come with an on/off switch initially. This is only ‘to aid public acceptance at introduction’ however, and so it’s likely that it intends to push for even stricter rules in the future, meaning a permanent system may come into force.
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Wonder how long that “public acceptance” phase will last. Five years? Ten? Forever? Less?
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You can track any flight directly from your iPhone’s text messages • CNET
Nelson Aguilar and Blake Stimac:
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The summer travel season here, and even if you’re not hopping on a plane, you probably know someone who is. And if they’re visiting you, it’s really important for you to keep track of their flight.
You need to know if the flight is expected to arrive early, or if it’s canceled entirely, especially if you’re picking someone up at the airport. You can obviously check out this information from an airline’s app or website, but there’s another way to track a flight without even having to leave the Messages app on your iPhone.
That’s right. There’s a hidden flight tracker built right into iMessage that you probably would have never noticed unless you threw in the right combination of details within a message.
It’s easy to check the status of the flight, and you can easily share the info with anyone else that needs to know.
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This is due to something that’s been in iOS since 2015, called Data Detectors. John Gruber has a good expansion of what this is about and, importantly, how it works (or doesn’t).
But then again, there are apps which will do this reliably. So it’s a nice quirk, but no more.
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Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra hands-on: ultra déjà vu • The Verge
Victoria Song:
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Look, it’s that Apple Watch Ultra but in an Android-friendly font.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing! There hasn’t really been a 1-to-1 equivalent for the Apple Watch Ultra in the Android space. Garmins are great, but they’re lacking in the smart features and third-party app department. Samsung is just filling a niche. Also, it’s $150 cheaper. Can’t argue with that.
It’s also not totally fair to call this an Apple Watch Ultra knockoff. Samsung does bring its own flavor. The 47mm titanium case is a squircle shape. Next to the Apple Watch Ultra 2, the squircle shape was chonkier overall. I had mixed feelings as to the style — I miss the rotating bezel! Yet it does look distinct and is wearable even on my smaller wrist. Furthermore, while there’s no physical rotating bezel, Samsung did include its signature digital touch bezel. That’s a good thing, as while the Quick Button looks and rotates like a digital crown, it doesn’t actually scroll. That threw me for a loop, but I imagine it’s simply something to get used to.
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The principal difference seems to be that the Samsung model has a round rather than rounded square face. And works on Android. But really, it is shameless to use the “Ultra” name and take the orange highlighting. One or the other might be admissible, but to use both is just shameless; it suggests you’ve got no marketing heft of your own.
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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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