Society

For decades, people have been trying to figure out how to create a cigarette without many of the downsides. Cigarettes sans the things that make smoking the biggest cause of preventable death in America like tar, carcinogens, etc. Cigarette companies tried to create “safe,” combustion-free smoking devices as far back as the 1980s. They were

The Conspiracy Capitaliser is a research project by Robert Collins to investigate and understand the intersection between AI, social media and profit. Comprised of a device, as a non-human participant, it allows the user to explore a wide spectrum of untruths which can be produced by AI systems and to experience, first-hand, the ethical dilemmas ahead of us as a technologically entangled society.

An anarchist walks out of a punk show to smoke. On her vest are anarchist patches with various standard slogans, “No Gods No Masters,” “Death To Transphobes,” “Kill Your Local Rapist,” “All Cops Are Bastards,” “Punch Nazis,” “From The River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free,” “Make Total Destroy,” “The Only Good Cop Is...

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As I start writing this, I am sitting in the inner courtyard of a beautiful hotel is Santiago (Chile); what I’m planning to write has been stirring in my mind for much too long… © 2019 …

Grief-laden vitriol directed at AI fails to help us understand paths to better futures that are neither utopian nor dystopian, but open to radically weird possibilities.

Large numbers of migrants from China are crossing into the U.S. and finding work on marijuana farms. Some of the businesses are accused of exploiting workers and violating state growing rules.

That was quite a night. Not surprisingly, I woke up late this morning. I simply couldn’t sleep because I was buzzing from what I had just witnessed—and I still am. On paper, it was a wild game of t…

Posted on Friday 21 Jun 2024. 636 words, 18 links. By Matt Webb.

The largest system of incarceration in human history

In just a decade fraud has almost doubled from just under 9,000 to over 23,000 in 2023.

The technology promised to make shopping easier. It has done the opposite

In her new book, Nell Watson, President of the European Responsible AI Office, breaks down how AI is impacting workers around the world.

After four years, as she prepares to hand off to her successor, our workplace advice columnist reflects on the rewards and the frustrations of office life.

Two days after his company's downfall, Austen Allred wrote: I wish people could see how ugly it is to be envious, and how obvious it is to those around you when that's what's happening. There's not much uglier than trying to tear someone down because they achieved what you wish

We asked a group of writers to consider the forces that have shaped our lives in 2017. Here, science fiction writer Ted Chiang looks at capitalism, Silicon Valley, and its fear of superintelligent AI.

What the Luddites can teach us about resisting an automated future.

Nine years after hackers targeted Ashley Madison, the dating site for wannabe adulterers, many people still don't grasp what was truly chilling about the scandal, says Annalee Newitz

Beyond the myth of the white, male superhero. Into the world of diversity and effectiveness in the U.S. Fire Service.

On the campus of Florida International University, in Miami, there’s a place ominously named “The Extreme Events Institute.” They map the risk of storm surge for the whole Caribbean, and study how the public perceives the threats from natural disasters. They’re also home to the International Hurricane Research Center. Their hangar houses a dozen giant

Breaking down all the important players and recent news of the AI boom.

Western societies stand on the brink of a great reversion towards a demographically and economically stagnant society reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

Too many workplaces still encourage a culture of ‘stress-bragging’ and pretending to be busy instead of actually getting stuff done.

Under the slogan ‘Think of the children’, the European Commission tried to introduce total surveillance of all EU citizens. When the scandal was revealed, it turned out that American tech companies and security services had been involved in the bill, generally known as ‘Chat Control’ – and that the whole thing had been directed by completely different interests. Now comes the next attempt. New battering rams have been brought out with the ‘Going Dark’ initiative. But the ambition is the same: to install state spyware on every European cell phone and computer.

Cliometrica - This article presents a database with the probably most up-to-date and reliable consumer price indices for a large sample of European countries since 1870. The database is a...

Lund University. Jonas Ljungberg needed access to different European countries' consumer price indices (CPIs) for the last 150 years to calculate real exchange rates for a research project. But when he looked at the CPIs listed in popular databases, he found that several of the figures were not reliable. This discovery led Jonas Ljungberg to launch a new research project in which he went back to the sources and compiled the most credible consumer price indices from 24 European countries between 1870 and 2022.