James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Google’s Waymo asks judge to halt all of Uber’s self-driving car plans
Uber Technologies Inc. is using stolen self-driving car technology in the pursuit of creating its own car, Waymo Inc. said last month when filing a lawsuit. On Friday, Waymo went one step further, asking a federal judge to halt all of Uber’s work on autonomous vehicle technology. Uber has maintained that the complaints made by ...
Uber rival Didi Chuxing sets up in Silicon Valley to pursue self-driving cars
Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing took over operations in China from its rival Uber Technologies Inc. in 2016 after Uber reportedly lost large sums of money in China that threatened its worldwide operations. Now, the company has just moved into Silicon Valley. In August, Uber boss Travis Kalanick announced he was selling his Chinese business for a 17.7 ...
Facebook reports BBC journalists to police for flagging posts containing child porn
Facebook Inc. has found itself the object of criticism after failing to remove images of sexualized children on its platform found by BBC investigative journalists. According to reports, Facebook had taken down only 18 photos out of 100 that the BBC’s team had flagged using Facebook’s tools. Facebook now has to answer to a group of ...
If exploiting big data played a role in Trump’s victory, it’s hardly new
Manipulating the “the herd” by telling them what they want to hear is hardly new. In the days of Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, understanding what the people wanted to hear or how they might behave given certain information took large teams of workers going through piles of hard copy data attained from focus ...
Tech industry hit by suspension of expedited H-1B visas
The Trump administration’s decision to halt fast processing of H-1B visas could disrupt the operations of many technology companies and quash the plans of thousands of immigrant workers. The Trump administration said in January that it would make changes to how the visas were issued, which at the time was seen as a cause for concern in ...
Virginia becomes the first state to allow delivery robots to use sidewalks
Virginians may have to get used to sharing their sidewalks with robots. The state passed a bill Wednesday to allow delivery drones to operate on sidewalks and crosswalks anywhere in the state. The new legislation, which will go into effect on July 1, was drafted by lawmakers Ron Villanueva and Bill DeSteph in collaboration with a delivery ...
Twitter gets serious on trolls with zero-tolerance anti-abuse measures
Twitter Inc. has taken more serious measures to curb abuse adding a flurry of new crime-fighting tools to the platform, with engineering vice president Ed Ho declaring that making Twitter “a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever.” Chief Executive Jack Dorsey in December asked Twitter users ...
Bill Gates on Steve Jobs, the woes of the world and why he wears hats in public
Bill Gates once again moved from wholly serious to wonderfully whimsical in his annual Reddit Ask Me Anything discussion Monday with the public. The 61-year-old Microsoft Corp. co-founder covered a wide range of topical subjects, from education, artificial intelligence and global disease to political schisms and how the Internet divides us. On a lighter note, ...
New Uber exec forced out over undisclosed sexual harassment allegations at Google
Ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. can’t seem to stop driving deeper into the mud. Just a month after getting hired as senior vice president of engineering at Uber, former longtime Google Inc. search executive Amit Singhal (pictured) has been let go from the ride-sharing company. Recode reported that the dismissal came after he failed to disclose ...
Rogue intelligent agents? Bots have spent years battling on Wikipedia edits
It’s not just humans who wrangle over revising entries on Wikipedia. A new study reveals that automated bots have been engaging in ongoing editing wars on the crowdsourced online encyclopedia for at least a decade. The new study, undertaken by scientists from the Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute, has revealed that the ...