James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Amazon hit with fine from OSHA for unsafe working conditions at its warehouses
The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced today that it had found various safety hazards at three warehouses belonging to Amazon.com Inc. Investigators for the OSHA said they inspected three sites at Deltona, Florida; Waukegan, Illinois; and New Windsor, New York. At all three, there were what it called “ergonomic hazards” in breach ...
Meta’s Oversight Board pushes for new nudity rules after accusing company of trans discrimination
Meta Platforms Inc.’s Oversight Board said today that it believes it’s time for Meta to change the rules regarding its adult nudity and sexual content policies. It’s not the first time the board, which polices Meta’s decisions on moderation, has asked for sweeping changes. This time the board says Meta, the parent company of Facebook ...
Ride-hailing giant Didi gets greenlight to sign up more users as China eases tech crackdown
After 18 months in the dark, the Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc. has been told by the powers that be in China that it can now start signing up new users again. Didi was just one victim in the tech milieu in China that was part of a Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on tech, ...
Congress rejects US Army’s request for $400 million to buy Microsoft’s HoloLens goggles
Congress has said no to a request from the U.S. Army for about $400 million to buy 6,900 pairs of goggles based on Microsoft Corp.’s HoloLens headset technology, it was first reported today by Bloomberg. When Microsoft unveiled its augmented reality headset in 2015, it made quite a splash, heralded as the technology that was ...
President Biden calls for political unity in clamping down on Big Tech abuses
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece today, President Joe Biden didn’t mince his words when he said Democrats and Republicans need to come together to create legislation that tackles some of the more pressing issues regarding America’s tech giants. Biden (pictured) opened the missive by saying he was proud of what technology companies in the ...
Microsoft unveils VALL-E, a text-to-speech AI that can mimic a voice from seconds of audio
Microsoft Corp. today provided a peek at a text-to-speech artificial intelligence tool that can apparently simulate a voice after listening to just three seconds of an audio sample. The company said its tool, VALL-E, can keep the emotional tone of the speaker for the rest of the message while also simulating the acoustics of the ...
Meta rolls out a new ad delivery system in response to discrimination
Meta Platforms Inc. said today that after working with the Department of Justice, it’s now ready to roll out a new technology that should distribute ads on its platforms more equitably. The social media giant settled with the DOJ last year after the company admitted that its housing ads algorithm had discriminated against people based ...
Innocent man arrested after yet another facial recognition failure
An Black man spent a week in jail in Louisiana in December because of a failure of facial recognition technology, it was reported today. Such technology being used in law enforcement is already controversial, with many experts saying that it could lead to wrongful arrests and has already been proved to show a racial bias ...
As slowing economy present more challenges, Amazon secures $8 billion loan
In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing today, Amazon.com Inc. said it has reached an agreement with several lenders for an $8 billion unsecured loan. The e-commerce giant didn’t specify at first where the money will be allocated, saying only that it will go toward “general corporate purposes.” Amazon later told Reuters, “Given the ...
US military hardware containing sensitive biometric data are being sold on eBay
German Researchers who were conducting a study on security managed to find an old U.S. military device on eBay containing the biometric data of 2,632 people, it was reported today. According to the New York Times, which first reported the story, the researchers were taken aback when they discovered what they’d got for their $68. ...