It should be pretty clear by now that the level of effort devoted to manipulating our opinions is unprecedented at the moment. Granted, a lot of this has to do with the fact that most of the “free” online services we use aren’t free at all. They are trading our ability to make measured opinions […]
As summer winds die down here’s hoping one of the season’s most ridiculous and unnecessary fads goes with them. Bird and Lime e-scooters — the vehicles for the two rival companies’ Mobility as a Service scheme — are just the latest twist on the foot-powered Razor Scooters that took America by storm in 2000. Unlike […]
Bias is a nasty beast. A market research class I took in graduate school focused on the identification and elimination of bias. My final paper was on an intentionally biased piece of research. It was far easier to introduce bias and then talk about the bias than it would have been to attempt to do […]
Leaders from Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic last week issued a dire warning that nations around the world haven’t been doing enough to ban the development of autonomous weapons — so-called “killer robots.” The groups issued a joint report that calls for a complete ban on these systems before […]
By John P. Mello Jr. Aug 28, 2018 5:00 AM PT Apple will release three new iPhones in September, according to Bloomberg — the latest media outlet to publish information from unnamed knowledgeable sources about the company’s plans. Although all the phones will have edge-to-edge displays, like the iPhone X, only two will have OLED […]
There’s a rumor in circulation that Amazon has been working on a DVR that would allow users to record live TV, and then stream that content to a smartphone and other mobile devices. Amazon aims to mount a direct challenge to DVR pioneer TiVo — a company that was at the forefront of digital video […]
By John P. Mello Jr. Aug 22, 2018 7:00 AM PT Microsoft on Monday said it has torpedoed a pair of websites designed to steal credentials from visitors to two Republican Party think tanks. The malicious websites were among six the company took down last week. A group of hackers affiliated with the Russian military […]
As a reporter, I cover a number of beats, including those related to advances in TV production and the technology that brings TV to our homes. In my lifetime I’ve seen some of the most significant advances in television, and unlike many who take it for granted, I have a very deep respect for TV. […]
Microsoft and Amazon on Wednesday announced the release of a public preview of the integration of their Cortana and Alexa voice assistants. Cortana will be available on amazon Echo devices, while Alexa will be available to U.S. customers on Windows 10 devices and on Harman Kardon Invoke speakers. “Our ongoing goal has been to make […]
Tesla is trending to fail spectacularly. (CEO Elon Musk actually has an impressive failure history.) Tesla has been burning cash at an unsustainable rate, and it keeps making avoidable mistakes that weaken it. Here’s what is weird: You’d think the firm’s biggest problem would be that every large car maker was working behind the scenes […]