James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Facebook join to battle extremist content
Tech giants Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Twitter Inc. have pledged to get tough on terrorism in a new effort to cull extremist content from their networks. The idea is that the four companies will create a shared database of “unique digital footprints” that will be known as “hashes.” Hashes refer to content ...
Report: Visa quotas from Brexit could harm UK’s tech dominance in Europe
The U.K. risks losing its position as the leader of tech in the region if visa quotas for skilled tech staff are not met as a result of the Brexit plan, according to analysis from Balderton Capital, a venture capital investor in Europe. According to the report, the U.K. is still the most desirable destination ...
Reddit CEO admits meddling with critical posts, heightening online speech issues
Reddit cofounder and Chief Executive Steve Huffman has admitted meddling with user comments, inflaming recent controversies concerning the user-generated news link site. “I abused my power to give the bullies a hard time,” Steve Huffman told the Washington Post. In light of the recent furor over what has been perceived as the promulgation of “fake news” ...
More skilled tech workers moving over the pond with UK’s special tech visas
Since the Brexit referendum this year, the U.K. has seen a sharp rise in applications for special tech visas, especially from U.S. citizens. According to The Telegraph, the visa, created to entice skilled tech workers over to the UK, was aimed at non-European Union workers in the tech industry. The government organization Tech City UK ...
Report: Facebook developing censorship tool for Chinese market
It’s no secret that Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been trying in earnest to woo China into allowing the social network to set up shop in the Communist-run country. Zuckerberg’s efforts have included controversial trips to China in which the young CEO has run through Tiananmen Square under a cloud of the country’s notorious ...
Peter Thiel seeking Silicon Valley ‘brain trust’ to guide Trump on tech issues
Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has been approaching other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in an attempt to form a “brain trust” to help President-elect Donald Trump. Although Thiel, a member of the Trump transition team, declined to comment to the Washington Post when approached, The Post reports that Thiel has struggled to find members for the ...
A programmer regrets creating code designed to deceive teen girls
“Boiler room” workers at investment firms quickly realize that their position as “financial consultants” actually can mean that they’re “thieves.” Now, a software programmer has found himself in the same situation. A story published last week shows how one programmer ended up working for pretty much the antithesis of his own ethics. Canadian programmer Bill Sourour had ...
Commercial pizza delivery by drone has finally landed – in New Zealand
Food delivery by drone is on its way to the mainstream. This year saw 7-Eleven Inc., with independent drone delivery service startup Flirtey, deliver a bunch of sugary snacks to a resident’s house in Reno, Nev. The arrival of a Slurpee to a customer’s house courtesy of a flying robot was said to be a first in ...
Google Earth VR: mesmerizing, but with a few glitches
The Mars virtual reality experience, since it was first unveiled in January this year, was generally accepted as being literally and figuratively an “out of the this world” experience – the kind of the thing we might only have dreamed about when we first started seeing VR depicted in the movies. According to some critics, ...
With A.I. Experiments, Google lets anyone play with machine learning
Machine learning has led to breakthroughs in fields such as speech recognition and language translation, but mere mortals and even coders often still aren’t sure how to use it and what to do with it. Now Google Inc., one of the leaders in machine learning, which enables computers to learn without explicit programming, has opened ...
