Technology

Twitter is offering cash rewards to people who can help the site tackle AI issues in relation to its image cropping algorithm. The bounty-style competition will offer prizes to participants who build their own assessment of the code responsible for automatically cropping images on the platform. In May, Twitter addressed months of feedback from users who said that the image cropping mechanism skewed towards favoring white people over Black people via a “saliency algorithm,” which deems what the most important part of an image is when our eyes scroll through the timeline. Bias in the same AI algorithm tended to favor women over men, with the image crop focusing on a woman’s chest or legs as a salient feature. For the competition, Twitter has shared its saliency model and the code used to gen...

The sweeping federal antitrust case against Google has given rise to a significant fight over data held by Microsoft, and the company is now facing a subpoena for millions of documents that could shed light on its attempts to compete with Google’s search engine. Having initially cooperated with prosecutors in building an antitrust case against Google, Microsoft could be obligated to produce millions more documents at the request of Google’s defense team. At a status hearing on Friday morning, Judge Amit Mehta heard arguments from both Google and Microsoft on the issue, but ultimately found more information was required before the court could give guidance as to how much internal data Microsoft would be required to produce. “No third party is more central to this litigation than Microsoft” ...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly demanded to become Apple’s CEO in a 2016 phone call with current Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to an upcoming book about Tesla. The story, shared by the Los Angeles Times, comes from Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century by The Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins. As the book tells it, Cook suggested to Musk that Apple acquire Tesla, and Musk said he wanted to be CEO. Cook reportedly agreed, but Musk clarified that he wanted to be the CEO of Apple. “According to a former aide who heard (Musk’s) retelling of the exchange,” Cook said “Fuck you” before hanging up the phone. But Musk and Apple have both suggested that the conversation couldn’t have happened because Musk and Cook have never spoken. Musk, in a tweet on Friday, flat out said ...

Elon Musk has had a busy Friday on Twitter. After flatly denying that he has ever spoken to Apple CEO Tim Cook in response to a wild story alleging he demanded to take over as the company’s CEO as part of an acquisition offer, Musk has now tweeted his support of Epic Games’ fight against Apple over App Store policies. “Apple app store fees are a de facto global tax on the Internet,” he said. “Epic is right.” Apple app store fees are a de facto global tax on the Internet. Epic is right. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2021 Epic is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Apple, arguing that its App Store rules, which allow Apple to take a 30 percent commission on many transactions on the App Store, are unfair and anti-competitive. Perhaps aiming to take advantage of the massive spotlight...

Using a screen reader to navigate Instagram, as some people with low vision do, is a strange patchwork of sounds. It can be overwhelming, especially if you’re used to quickly scanning information with your eyes, to hear a synthetic voice clunkily rattle off usernames, timestamps, and like counts as though they’re all equally important as the actual content of the post. Among all that auditory stimulation, if someone added alt text to their photo, you might hear something like “John and I standing with our ankles in the water at the beach. John is making a distressed face while I menacingly hold out a dead crab and laugh.” The image descriptions used by screen readers have to be added by users, and like many accessibility features in social media, those fields are regularly neglected. In th...

Russia’s space agency blamed a “short-term software failure” for yesterday’s engine mishap with its new science module. The module’s thrusters unexpectedly fired hours after docking, shifting the International Space Station off its normal position. The software glitch caused the Nauka module to think it was supposed to back away from the station. The space station, a football field-sized research laboratory floating 270 miles up in low-Earth orbit, was shoved 45 degrees off track once Nauka’s thrusters started firing. NASA said it lost control of the station’s positioning minutes later, but it was eventually repositioned back to normal after thrusters from another Russian module counteracted Nauka’s errant firings. “Due to a short-term software failure, a direct command was mistakenly impl...

If you’re a TikTok creator, then you know how quickly those minutes of video can fly by. One of the ways you can move storytelling along is by using transitions between clips. While TikTok offers a handful of templates that resemble slideshow presentation transitions, these don’t seem to be very popular. Instead, many users opt for manual transitions that use video editing and recording tricks to make their video flow from one clip to the next. Some of these transitions are relatively simple and only require a couple of steps, while others need a little bit of planning. All the transitions serve a purpose, though, and that is to move the video along and keep pace with either the music or what the person is saying. Transitions can also be used to reveal something new, like an appearance cha...

Conservative legislators and special interest groups are using scientific studies as a cudgel in their attempts to limit children’s access to gender affirming healthcare. One of the biggest battles is taking place in Arkansas. “We can’t act like these studies don’t matter,” Arkansas state Senator Alan Clark said on March 29th, arguing in support of HB 1570, a ban on gender affirming healthcare for minors in Arkansas. Clark was referring to cherry-picked research that depicted various treatments as dangerous, experimental, and unsafe for children. After a vote, Arkansas became the first state to pass such a bill into law. The ACLU filed a lawsuit against Arkansas in May challenging the constitutionality of the law. A judge temporarily blocked the ban on July 21st, days before it was set to ...

Tesla agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company used a software update to reduce the maximum battery voltage for some of its Model S sedans, Reuters reports. The software update, which was released in 2019, resulted in slower charging speed and diminished range for around 1,743 vehicles, the plaintiffs alleged. As a result of the settlement, Tesla agreed to pay $625 to each of the affected vehicle owners. Tesla agreed to pay $625 to each of the affected vehicle owners “This amount is many times the prorated value of the temporarily reduced maximum voltage, and thus represents an excellent and efficient result for the Settlement Class,” the court document reads. “In return, the Settlement Class will release claims related to the software updates that imposed and th...

The Beatles seminal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is set to receive another Dolby Atmos mix, after producer Giles Martin, son of the album’s original producer George Martin, admitted that the current version “doesn’t sound quite right.” The current mix, produced by the younger Martin in 2017, was made with Dolby Atmos theaters in mind, rather than personal listening via services like Apple Music. “I’m gonna replace it,” the said the two time Grammy winner to Rolling Stone. “It’s good. But it’s not right.” The current Atmos mix of the album was created to coincide with its 50th anniversary in 2017. At the time, it was designed to be played in Dolby Atmos cinemas at a series of live listening events. But now that it is available via streaming services like Amazon Music HD and more re...

Apple is a notoriously secretive company, and a cease and desist letter recently acquired by Motherboard sheds new light on exactly why, arguing that leaks harm accessory makers, consumers, and Apple itself. The C&D order reportedly sent to a Chinese citizen by Apple’s lawyers in China, says that leaks about Apple’s iPhone dimensions could mislead case manufacturers, who might make accessories that are incompatible with the final product. As Apple puts it, “third-party accessory manufacturers may develop and sell mobile phone cases and other accessories that are not actually compatible with the unreleased products.” Motherboard notes that the market for Apple accessories is estimated to be worth almost $20 billion worldwide. “The secret of Apple’s latest technological innovation is an ...

This past week, Reebok officially revealed that it is launching its Courting Greatness Fall/Winter 2021 basketball campaign alongside an AR tool that is hoping to inspire the Reebok community to set up basketball courts anywhere they go. Reebok is teaming up with New York Sunshine Install Team to make the sport of basketball accessible for anyone who wants to play. Location and surroundings are no longer a boundary as the technology uses augmented reality to map out the rough dimensions of a potential basketball court wherever there may be an empty space for an installation. With New York Sunshine Install, Reebok will also provide users with a way of creating the court using miscellaneous found materials, be it a garbage can or a crate for a makeshift backboard. To coincide with the launch...