James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Net neutrality gets a reprieve, but it could be short-lived
The U.S. Senate Wednesday voted to save net neutrality by overturning a decision made by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal the regulations made in 2015 under President Barack Obama. The vote was 52 to 47 and included three Republicans along with all 49 Democrats on the side of reversing the FCC decision. Such a ...
Facebook details abuse on platform – and AI falls short in flagging some of it
Facebook Inc. Tuesday released its first Community Standards Enforcement Report, detailing what its algorithm and human moderators have detected and removed from October last year to March this year. The upshot: a lot. Facebook said it took down 583 million fake accounts, most of which were removed within minutes of being setup. Some 837 million pieces of ...
Google employees leave company over supplying Pentagon with AI
Close to a dozen employees at Google Inc. have apparently quit their jobs in protest over a project in which the company is providing the U.S. Department of Defense with artificial intelligence. In March, several employees at Google said they were outraged about the project, some stating that it was a contradiction of its onetime motto, “Don’t be ...
Propaganda fears heighten as House Democrats release thousands of Russian-linked Facebook ads
Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee released a total of 3,519 Facebook ads on Thursday that were run from 2015 to 2017 by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency. All the ads are available to the public as a download. They cover a wide range of opinions, from pro- and anti-Donald Trump, and for the most ...
ZTE ceases operations after crippling US ban brings company to its knees
Chinese electronics giant ZTE Corp. announced Wednesday that it has ceased major operating activities following a seven-year ban that forbids U.S. companies from supplying ZTE with components. “As a result of the Denial Order, the major operating activities of the company have ceased,” ZTE said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Wednesday. ...
In a big management shakeup, execs bounce around Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg will remain at the helm of Facebook Inc., and his Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg remains at that job too, but many other execs have just been given a new role at the company. According to a report published Tuesday by Recode and confirmed by the social network giant, the shakeup is designed ...
Autonomous vehicle startup Drive.ai will give Texas its first self-driving cars
California-based Drive.ai announced Monday that it will soon launch a pilot program for self-driving cars in Frisco, Texas, that will allow users to order a ride via its smartphone app. The program will start in July and run for six months, offering rides to up to 10,000 people within a geofenced area comprising of retail, ...
Criminal gang used drone swarm to foil FBI raid
In what sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie, the FBI reported this week that last year a hostage raid was undone when criminals employed a swarm of drones to get in officers’ faces. According to Joe Mazel, the head of the FBI’s Operational Technology Law unit, this is a new way that criminals ...
Cambridge Analytica shuts down, but probes of its Facebook data use continue
Cambridge Analytica, the company behind the data harvesting scandal that affected as many as 87 million Facebook users, Wednesday announced it will cease all operations in the U.K. and the U.S. The British political consulting company said in a press release that because of what had happened, it had been “vilified” in the media, although ...
Oculus Go and its new features: enough to take VR mainstream?
The hotly anticipated Oculus Go became available to the public on Tuesday, a standalone virtual reality headset that might induce the average consumer to take the plunge and finally get into VR. The reason for that is a low price of just $199 and also the fact that you don’t need to hook it up to ...