James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Twitter employee reportedly acted as Saudi Arabian spy
Trolls worked for the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his advisors to discredit slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) and other critics of the government on Twitter, according to a New York Times report Saturday. But most interesting, it seems they also had a man on the inside. According to the report, a “troll farm” consisting on ...
Ahead of elections, Facebook opens up a ‘war room’ to fight fake news
Facebook Inc. gave reporters a tour of its “war room” Wednesday, explaining its latest efforts to tackle election interference. “As our teams have gotten smarter, so have the adversaries seeking to misuse our services,” Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s director of product management and civic engagement, wrote in a post Thursday. With the Brazil and U.S. elections drawing ...
Google’s Chinese search engine now seems to be a certainty
The controversial search engine that Google LLC has been developing in China might soon become a reality, despite objections from inside the company and from some critics. Speaking on Monday at the WIRED 25 Summit, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai (pictured) seemed unfazed regarding criticism the company has faced for once pulling out of China ...
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is dead at 65
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen passed away on Monday from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Allen revealed two weeks ago that the disease had returned after he spent years battling and overcoming it. He said in a statement at the time that he believed he could beat it again. “A lot has happened in medicine since ...
Facebook takes down hundreds of pages for ‘inauthentic’ political content
With the U.S. midterm elections looming, Facebook Inc. has removed hundreds of pages related to political spamming and what the company calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” In a blog post, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, and product manager Oscar Rodriguez, said the pages weren’t taken down for their content per se, but because they ...
Amazon axes AI recruiting tool that wasn’t too keen on women
Amazon.com Inc. recently had to shut down a machine learning recruiting tool because it apparently showed bias against female applicants. According to Reuters, which first published the story, Amazon had been using artificial intelligence since 2014 to go through resumes faster than a human eye could and pick out the best talent. Resumes were scanned, ...
Apple has been secretly fighting iPhone fraud in China
Apple Inc. had to go to war in China over fraudsters who were making handsome profits from buying or stealing iPhones, replacing some parts, and then claiming the phones were broken, according to a report in The Information published Tuesday. That report states that in 2013, Apple’s only retail store in Shenzhen, China, had to ...
‘Presidential Alert,’ though not from Trump himself, hits millions of US phones
Millions of Americans on Wednesday received what may have looked like a text message from U.S. President Donald Trump. The text was sent out at 2:18 p.m. EDT to test the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, a joint operation led by FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission. A FEMA official told CNN that the system ...
Facebook introduces new anti-bullying tools to curb harassment
Facebook Inc. has bolstered its efforts to reduce the amount of bullying that occurs on the platform with a slew of new anti-bullying tools. On Tuesday, the company announced that it intends to give people more control over what they see and how they interact with people to counter harassment. It’s no secret that Facebook ...
With new Maps feature, Google aims to alleviate the drudgery of commuting
Google LLC has brought out a couple of new features in Google Maps that might help deal with the stress of being stuck in gridlocked traffic. Announced Monday, the new “Commute” tab is tailored to a person’s daily drive, bus ride or train ride to and from the workplace. Once Maps knows the details of your journey, you ...