Slashdot Mirror

The reason Apple dropped to second is because Huawei has been knocking it out of the park at Samsung’s expense.

Apple dropped to third, not second. Samsung did well to hold onto first place in the face of truly aggressive competition. And don't forget that Samsung makes a bunch of moulah every time Apple sells an iPhone.

Sorry. Here is the working link.

Let me correct you, Google: zero notches is the limit and the notch in the Pixel 3 XL is the most horrible thing I've ever seen.

I'd define a "notch" as a concavity in the outline of a handheld device's screen to accommodate a speaker, front-facing camera, or microphone. The iPhone X was the first well-known smartphone to have one, which Apple calls the "sensor housing", and apps such as Halide have adapted to show indicators in the "ears" on either side of it.

You (oddly) left out the part where Ajit Pai said the FTC, not the FCC, was the appropriate body to enforce Net Neutrality regulations.

Funny how critics of the FCC always fail to include that point.

From Ajit Pai's statement:

Moreover, we empower the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that consumers and competition are protected. Two years ago, the Title II Order stripped the FTC of its jurisdiction over broadband providers. But today, we are putting our nation’s premier consumer protection cop back on the beat. The FTC will once again have the authority to take action against Internet service providers that engage in anticompetitive, unfair, or deceptive acts. As FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen recently said, “The FTC’s ability to protect consumers and promote competition in the broadband industry isn’t something new and far-fetched. We have a long-established role in preserving the values that consumers care about online.” Or as President Obama’s first FTC Chairman put it just yesterday, “the plan to restore FTC jurisdiction is good for consumers. . . . [T]he sky isn’t falling. Consumers will remain protected, and the [I]nternet will continue to thrive.”

Source

We do every once in a while, but their efforts are drowned out by the mob howling about a shirt his friend made for him.

You asked about major OSes, and implied that MacOS was a major OS. It is not.

It is to over ONE HUNDRED MILLION Active Mac owners worldwide:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Now, something like AmigaOS, ReactOS or BeOS, now THOSE are decidedly NOT "Major" OSes.

And Mobile OSes don't count, sorry. That's more akin to Embedded Firmware than a proper OS, even if it plays one on TV, and has pieces-parts of a real OS included.

Oh, so Google *hasn't* built a trillion-dollar business centered around surveillance and advertising - an inherently parasitic and psychologically manipulative industry - and isn't now using it's huge reach and power to branch out into social engineering and mass behavioral control?

If the government was doing a tenth of the shit google is you'd grab the next plane to Montana and build a shack in the woods to live the rest of your life in.

Nobody ever said it was a hate symbol because the Trump campaign was using it. To the best of my knowledge, the Trump campaign never did.

They said it was being used by hate groups and neo-Nazis, which it absolutely was. In fact, the Frog's creator recently won a legal action against the Daily Stormer to get them to stop using it.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

What makes them shit? The fact that they get regular updates for many years or the fact that Apple doesn't spy on you anything like as much as Google. In any case did you miss this https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

Putin says the nation that leads in AI 'will be the ruler of the world'

How about we at least look into some ways to defend against this?

Given that would wipe out Irelands position as european tech darling ireland probably wouldn't allow it or would procrastinate long enough for google to withdraw the funds.

Because that totally happened when the EU made Apple repay 3x the quantity involved in the Google fine to Ireland to negate Ireland's illegal tax subsidy.

Try again?

Various sources state that this fine has more to do with Google's "monopoly" in search than about any inherent issues in Android which makes me think: are there any real alternatives to Google Search? I regularly try other search engines and none has come close to Google's breadth and coverage by a very long shot. If the EU is advocating for ending Google's monopoly in search, where the alternatives are? I can only think of Baidu but it's mostly a Chinese search engine. Bing just sucks. Yahoo is basically Bing. DuckDuckGo is a search engine aggregator. Yandex was a Google competitor in CIS but its dominance ended around 2010 once Google engineers implemented morphology support for Cyrillic languages.

As for Android forks, the EU authorities have lost their minds completely. There are dozens of Android forks. In Asia all major OEMs (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Lenovo, etc.) have their own Android forks with their own app stores. Also, Android fragmentation is the least anyone in the world would want - it will basically make Android a lot less competitive that it is vs. Apple which has the only iOS version which runs all their devices (sans the ones which Apple no longer supports).

In short, this fine is just absurd and I'm not sure what is that the EU really wants from Google. Money?

"No viable alternatives" . Speak for yourself and not others. I personally have switched to DDG completely, no issues.

"Android fragmentation". I think you are confounding with EU telling Google to not force OEMs into bundling search app with OS as fragmentation. Separate issues with separate underlying processes.

"I'm not sure what is it that EU really wants" If you don't know then you don't get to make up an answer. Try to read their statement before jumping to your own made up conclusions.

It's sad when modern people have errors in logical thinking.

Various sources state that this fine has more to do with Google's "monopoly" in search than about any inherent issues in Android which makes me think: are there any real alternatives to Google Search? I regularly try other search engines and none has come close to Google's breadth and coverage by a very long shot. If the EU is advocating for ending Google's monopoly in search, where the alternatives are? I can only think of Baidu but it's mostly a Chinese search engine. Bing just sucks. Yahoo is basically Bing. DuckDuckGo is a search engine aggregator. Yandex was a Google competitor in CIS but its dominance ended around 2010 once Google engineers implemented morphology support for Cyrillic languages.

As for Android forks, the EU authorities have lost their minds completely. There are dozens of Android forks. In Asia all major OEMs (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Lenovo, etc.) have their own Android forks with their own app stores. Also, Android fragmentation is the least anyone in the world would want - it will basically make Android a lot less competitive that it is vs. Apple which has the only iOS version which runs all their devices (sans the ones which Apple no longer supports).

In short, this fine is just absurd and I'm not sure what is that the EU really wants from Google. Money?

Funny, the most common thing I hear about problems competing when it comes to the 'small guys' is the 'big guys' pushing them out with every dirty trick they can think of.

Following some ground rules for being fair to your customers is probably far easier compared to competing with incumbent big name ISPs. Besides, I bet small ISPs don't do enough business to make screwing over customers a valid business strategy. I fail to see how it'd be overly demanding of a small company to expect them to provide their advertised speed and service quality, to not demand they pay extra to use certain websites, etc.

No, I think the companies that stand to lose the most are big ISPs. Perhaps they should have dealt more honestly with the American people and we wouldn't need to legislate them into behaving.

So basically some Chrome fanboy is paranoid about articles such as the one at The Verge which outline the far bigger problem with Chrome, and so it trying to deflect attention: "Hey, look! Chrome is 0.001ms faster than Firefox (sometimes)!"

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

It seems people have started to just lazily accept the browser monoculture of a Chrome-dominated web with no acknowledgement that this is the exact same nightmare we went through back in the day with Internet Explorer. We're seeing underhanded and sneaky bundling deals and drive-by trojan installs (which then make Chrome the default), as well as a push for proprietary markup that only works with Chrome and subsequently websites that REQUIRE Chrome for use.

Why are we giving Google so much of a free pass for all the things Microsoft got raked over the coals (and taken to court) for? It seems peoples' memories are quite short, but I can assure you that a lot of us are STILL dealing with the fall-out of websites requiring Internet Explorer to this very day.

Sounds like Adobe is jumping early into the game of going unified for their codebase for IOS and OSX. https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

I don't see why "Chinese" needs thrown in except for clickbait.

Because the American makers do not do this, nor do the Japanese ones ... That's why you can buy e.g. a Motorola phone and then unlock it with help from their website, and load AOSP if you like.

Uh-oh. You may want to check on the nationality of Motorola's ownership. Hint: not in Schaumburg, Illinois anymore.

"They sell ads, not personal data."

Bullshit. I can buy info right now that tells me when I was last getting into or leaving a vehicle. All collected and sold by GOOGLE through my Android phone. Collected even when I told it fucking not to.

Take your ass to a mental hospital, because it is clear that you do not reside in reality.

Sounds a lot like this: Kristen Wiig voices a human-powered virtual assistant in podcast drama Sandra

I agree. She comes across as angry, insulting, and likely to drive away long term customers. She went nuclear after a civil comment making a minor game idea.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

I've seen quotes of the post. He complemented her, said her post was interesting and that he agreed with most of it. he had one minor fairly technical point about having multiple dialogue trees so customers could customize their own experience of the character.

I saw nothing about Deroir's post that even displayed inciviliit

She then went nuclear on him. She reacted badly. She attacked one of the companies long term customers who was known to other customers too.

Perhaps you can help me out.

What part of this is trollish?

" âoeReally interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree slightly,â and shared a three-tweet explanation of how narrative design influences player expression in the sort of games that Price narratively designs."

She responded with the mansplaining comment here

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

her comments upset many other fans and so she tweeted...

"âoeIâ(TM)m not on the clock here. Iâ(TM)m not your emotional courtesan just because Iâ(TM)m a dev. Donâ(TM)t expect me to pretend to like you here.â

That's very abrasive, confrontational, and was directed at *many* of the companies customers.

I would have fired her too.

Seems like one also needs a design/engineering staff to design phones. See: https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

you don't need mint to avoid a 'bullshit ui' from ubuntu. you just like slamming canonical, i guess.

because all that's needed is 4 or 5 brain cells to power yourself to configuring something else on it.. including your precious mint's default of cinnamon.

Let's break it down:

you just like slamming canonical, i guess.

It's easier to install 3rd party software on Ubuntu than it is on Debian.

Indeed.

because all that's needed is 4 or 5 brain cells to power yourself

Perhaps you should have engaged your 4 or 5 remaining brain cells before replying? I've used Ubuntu from around 5.10 up to and including when they introduced Unity. Tried to like it, gave up, moved on. But Unity was so awesome that they didn't cancel it, amirite?

to configuring something else on it.. including your precious mint's default of cinnamon.

Do more work to achieve the same thing, why?

And what would I gain from doing it that way anyway?

Canonical deserves to be called out for fucking up the UI, just like one would call out MS for fucking up the UI

I guess there is a first for everything. . . "I can’t say for sure, but I would guess it’s currently the only vehicle assembly for a high volume car going on under a tent right now,"

The thing is, there are estimates that the difference in moving parts are 20 vs 10,000!!! Perhaps once EVs take over, all cars will be assembled in tents?

More lies spouted off by the Uber PR machine.

Uber also suspended its testing in San Francisco and Pittsburgh following the crash,

Lie #1: Uber was permanently banned from testing in San Francisco in December several months before the crash. This is the reason why. See the video for yourself. At the time, Uber placed the entire blame on the driver saying that he was the only one driving the car and that the system was disengaged, but internal documents later obtained by the New York Times show the direct opposite of that claim. That's lie #2.

And please note, at that time Travis Kalanick was no longer in charge, so the lying is not something they can blame on him anymore. Also note that San Francisco has nothing against self-driving cars themselves, it's currently allowing two self-driving car companies to test their cars 24/7 all over its city. And the State of California itself has nothing against self-driving cars/trucks, it is currently allowing a number of different self-driving cars and self-driving 18-wheelers to drive within its State and even on public freeways at normal speeds 24/7.

it let its California permit for testing self-driving vehicles lapse that month.

Lie #3: While it's correct that Uber preemptively suspended all its testing on public roads after the crash, the real truth is that California, Arizona, and one other State informed it that Uber would no longer be allowed to test on their public roads as soon as they learned of the deadly accident themselves. So letting their California permit lapse is complete hogwash too.

And while the NTSB could give its ok, after all it's a Federal government organization under the influence of President Trump. It's very unlikely that States would allow Uber self-driving cars on their public roads ever again (unless some serious campaign contributions/bribes exchanged hands). So for that reason, I would recommend everyone to stay vigilant and be proactive about contacting your State representatives to let them know that you don't think Uber can be trusted.

Self-driving cars and trucks are coming. That is for certain. In the US alone, there are 50+ companies working on the problem. It's just that Uber should not be one of those companies. It still lies too much. Uber is too desperate for an IPO right now. It's only interested in self-driving cars as an excuse for raising billions of dollars. That's why they've been cutting so many corners. That, and the fact that their company is still rotten to the core despite Travis no longer being CEO.

According to this, the average telecom bribe (or campaign contribution or lobby gift or whatever you want to call it) was about $145,000 for members of the House, slightly more on average for the Republicans who are the party opposing net neutrality. That means the conversion of votes to dollars is 46 votes = $6.8 million. That's how much we're short. I like when votes are listed both number and dollars.

Someone? Some- one ? Singular?

You sure?

https://www.theverge.com/2013/...

The NSA collects mobile location data under an executive order issued by the Reagan White House in 1981, reports The Hill. The news follows The Washington Post's report revealing how the agency tracks the locations of hundreds of millions of citizens around the world, supported by documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

So, there are some methods that came to mind with about 30 seconds of thought. Think that Apple engineers can't come up with a dozen or more methods to accomplish this after a couple of weeks' working on it?

Some phones assign functions to squeezing the bezel itself:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Good point!

I guess I should have spent a whole minute thinking about this, then, LOL!
Just because there isn't an external physical button doesn't mean that you can't hide a pressure-sensitive switch inside the phone.

So, there are some methods that came to mind with about 30 seconds of thought. Think that Apple engineers can't come up with a dozen or more methods to accomplish this after a couple of weeks' working on it?

Some phones assign functions to squeezing the bezel itself:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Just because there isn't an external physical button doesn't mean that you can't hide a pressure-sensitive switch inside the phone.

Interestingly, there is a recent (ongoing) lawsuit on that very topic.

People have very short term memory, it's like this never happebed at all ever:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...

I own four pieces of antique farm equipment that I no longer need to help pick cotton.

If no Devuan developer can use an old PC, some school can use it, and a volunteer who keeps it going. Since Microsoft is being much nicer to Open Source these days but once in a while still shows that they don't get it, I'd suggest you use Linux.

Samsung is now the world’s biggest chipmaker. Happy birthday, Intel!

It was just announced that Microsoft has purchased GitHub, so people who don't like the GVFS name can just...git. And by the way, when "something sinister" is one of the multiple choices for guessing Microsoft's agenda, it's always a safe bet.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

How soon we forget:

Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day

It took less than 24 hours for Twitter to corrupt an innocent AI chatbot. Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled Tay — a Twitter bot that the company described as an experiment in "conversational understanding." The more you chat with Tay, said Microsoft, the smarter it gets, learning to engage people through "casual and playful conversation."

Unfortunately, the conversations didn't stay playful for long. Pretty soon after Tay launched, people starting tweeting the bot with all sorts of misogynistic, racist, and Donald Trumpist remarks. And Tay — being essentially a robot parrot with an internet connection — started repeating these sentiments back to users, proving correct that old programming adage: flaming garbage pile in, flaming garbage pile out.

Nothing can prevent a criminal from selling anything to a willing black market buyer. If the buyer actually wants to verify that the phone is legitimate, he or she can look up the IMEI on the blacklist.

"The censorship arm also says that it’s in talks with Google to ban the app from Google Play."
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

As for sideloading: they can simply go after larger repositories (block telegram or we block you). They are unlikely to be able to block small sites (eg blogs), but removing "official" sources is likely to kill more then 99% of app market share in Russia and if they really care they can go after users then.

You probably own a smartphone, which the FBI can remotely activate it to listen in on you any time it wants.

And if the FBI can do it, so can hackers.

Own a smart TV? You know, those things have mics, too.

Own a recently-built car? The security systems that all cars come with now has the same feature set.

You can't escape the surveillance state.

Verizon was fined for violating network nuetrality in 2012 when they blocked people from tethering, again in 2016 for supercookies, and they were throttling video just last year. This is a non-exhaustive list.

Each of these violations happened under different rules, which they thought they could get away with (and mostly did) because the former rules were so lax. Your claim that no "ISP has yet done anything differently" is ridiculous - what they have done is dropped any plans that they had for maintaining network neutrality, because those plans are now unnecessary. Now they go back to what they were doing before, only this time with no consequences.

ganjadude posited:

"the people" are better benefited by robots, the workers maybe not so much but the customers, they will be

Mmm - not so much, I think.

If you're talking about, say, dishwashers, then, yeah, replacing them with semi-autonomous robots to load and unload trays of dishes, etc, from industrial-grade dishwashing machines makes perfect sense. Anyone who expects those jobs to last forever has not been paying attention. But, if you're talking about actual food preparation, then, no, the people will definitely not be "better benefited" by robots replacing chefs and their assistants.

Cooked-to-order food is a craft that demands a pretty high order of adaptability and experience. The first commercially-available burger-flipping robot is limited to doing exactly that - and nothing more. Humans have to put cheese slices on the patties, because Flippy the robot only flips them and takes them off the grill. (Apparently humans have to stage patties for Flippy to flip, as well.) Industrial robots are currently not anywhere close to being capable of doing the complex series of tasks required to craft even fairly straightforward recipes. They can do one or two, highly-repetitive things, as long as conditions don't stray from the parameters they're programmed to work within.

Let me give you an example from the auto parts industry, with which a friend of mine who has spent decades programming industrial robots recently regaled me, to illustrate the kind of limitations I'm talking about here:

My friend now works for a very large OEM manufacturer of automotive parts for basically every car company in the USA. One particular production line (they have lots of them) kept shutting down at the same work cell half-a-dozen times a day, which is VERY expensive, since the entire line has to be cleared before it can be re-started. This problem was creating a major backlog for the company, and costing it considerable money. So the automation department convened an all-hands meeting to address it - basically all the programmers on the day shift were there, plus my friend (who was nominally on the night shift, but was called in, because he's a wizard at this stuff, and everyone there understands that).

When the decision was made to form a task force, and the programming staff began being divided into committees, my buddy asked to be excused to go to the men's room. Everybody there knows he smokes cigarettes, and they all assumed that's what he was going to do, so his absence wasn't really noticed once the debating society got into full swing.

Meanwhile, my friend did, indeed, go outside to smoke. But then, instead of going back to the meeting, he went down to the production floor, loaded a bunch of widgets that had stacked up outside the problematic work cell into its parts supply bin, and ran it through a sufficient number of cycles to reproduce the problem. He then inspected the piece in-situ, and determined (after a few additonal cycles) that the problem was that particular station's task was to insert and tighten down a single, hex-head bolt. To determine whether it had accomplished that successfully, it was equipped with an optical sensor, that measured the light reflecting from the bolt's head.

As it turned out, the system was calibrated to flag the task as having failed, if the bolt's head was oriented with a vertex facing the sensor. It'd pass the test only if the bolt's head was oriented so that the lightsource was reflected from a flat face - and, of course, that didn't always happen. So my pal reprogrammed the sensor parameters to pass a bolt that was oriented either way, but fail one that hadn't been installed at all.

After running the cell through its paces a sufficient number of times to be certain his fix had actually solved the problem, he went back to the meeting he'd left 90 minutes earlier, and announced

Never going to happen? They are already here

There was a human in the Uber car. Theoretically she was there to provide a human element that backed up the self-driving. But she was not giving her full attention to safety.

[The Uber safety driver] told investigators she had been "monitoring the self-driving system interface," which is displayed on an iPad mounted on the vehicle's center console.

  https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17388696/uber-self-driving-crash-ntsb-report

I think Uber should change their procedure. Have two humans in the car: one to provide safety backup to the driving, and one to manage the iPad app. That will cost more than just having one human in the car, but would have saved a life in this case.

Note that the NTSB says the pedestrian was crossing unsafely, which contributed to the incident. Again quoting from the above-linked article in The Verge:

The report frames [the pedestrian's] actions in the moments before the crash in a fairly negative light. Investigators note she was crossing the street outside the crosswalk, wearing dark clothing, and, according to a post-crash toxicology report, had methamphetamine and marijuana in her system. The NTSB also notes that the median on Mill Avenue where [the pedestrian] was crossing the street was not illuminated by lighting and featured signage warning pedestrians not to cross there.

I don't see what the drugs in her system had to do with anything; I think this would have happened the same way even if she was completely sober. But she was doing an unsafe thing when she died.

In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...

Okay, that's pretty bad.

Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

This is not an example of a human rights violation. In no way does this mean women aren't allowed to hold these jobs or apply for them, it just means they are less likely to have these positions advertised to them. Also, who the hell chooses a career based on an Internet advertisement? You should be blocking that shit, anyway. I wouldn't hire anyone -- man or woman -- who doesn't appreciate a good ad blocker.

An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid."
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

As a public benefits recipient myself, I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of people were affected by this screw-up, not just pregnant women specifically. We really need a broader focus, rather than a focus on broads.

"Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Again, no human rights violated here. Sounds like some math was done wrong and spit out a scary number.

The list is endless.

It could really use some pruning and trimming. Stick to actual human rights violations, throwing all that other crap in there is artificially inflating the size of the problem and making me want to tune it out entirely.

In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...

Okay, that's pretty bad.

Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

This is not an example of a human rights violation. In no way does this mean women aren't allowed to hold these jobs or apply for them, it just means they are less likely to have these positions advertised to them. Also, who the hell chooses a career based on an Internet advertisement? You should be blocking that shit, anyway. I wouldn't hire anyone -- man or woman -- who doesn't appreciate a good ad blocker.

An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid."
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

As a public benefits recipient myself, I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of people were affected by this screw-up, not just pregnant women specifically. We really need a broader focus, rather than a focus on broads.

"Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Again, no human rights violated here. Sounds like some math was done wrong and spit out a scary number.

The list is endless.

It could really use some pruning and trimming. Stick to actual human rights violations, throwing all that other crap in there is artificially inflating the size of the problem and making me want to tune it out entirely.

Here are some examples:

- In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...

- Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

- An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid." https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

- "Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

The list is endless.

The general assumption is: 'algorithms use math and data, thus they must be neutral and scientific'. But it's not that simple. This site explains it: https://www.mathwashing.com/

"The real danger, then, is not machines that are more intelligent than we are usurping our role as captains of our destinies. The real danger is basically clueless machines being ceded authority far beyond their competence." - Daniel Denett

Here are some examples:

- In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...

- Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

- An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid." https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

- "Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

The list is endless.

The general assumption is: 'algorithms use math and data, thus they must be neutral and scientific'. But it's not that simple. This site explains it: https://www.mathwashing.com/

"The real danger, then, is not machines that are more intelligent than we are usurping our role as captains of our destinies. The real danger is basically clueless machines being ceded authority far beyond their competence." - Daniel Denett

Net Neutrality is a separate issue from the regional monopoly BS that most ISPs enjoy. That doesn't make it unimportant after we've already had blatant examples of both Verizon https://www.theverge.com/2017/... and Comcast https://consumerist.com/2014/0... throttling streaming video services like Netflix to try and get customers to subscribe to their services instead or to extort money from streaming video providers.

And that's where I think things get murky fast. I'll be the first to admit I don't understand the details of what happened between Verizon, Comcast, and Netflix. In general terms, I think it was basically a contract dispute about who was going to pay whom for what. I guarantee armies of lawyers and CxOs were involved in the negotiations and I'm not going to try to outguess them. I'm pretty sure Comcast and Verizon would find it a Pyrrhic victory if they really reduced the quality of Netfilx streams for no good reason other than to make their service look better. Anyway, we have ways to resolve contract disputes, they slug it out in courts and the court of public opinion and eventually settle. I, personally, am more comfortable depending on that process than FCC regulation.

Just a few things to add re: Net Neutrality: The Netflix and ISPs throttling streaming video was just one example (the most prominent). In 2007 the FCC took Comcast to court over throttling P2P traffic and forced them to knock it off. Unfortunately, the courts overturned this ruling in 2010 because they ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to issue commands regarding Comcast's shaping practices. But, the courts gave the FCC another option: reclassification. That's why the FCC reclassified broadband services under Title II common carrier protections in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Other services that have previously been (and are sometimes still) affected by ISPs throttling/shaping traffic are VoIP services (ex Skype and others) as well as VPN use. VoIP services (particularly free ones like Discord) don't have the money to fight ISPs in the courts, but worse is VPN service. VPNs are used by any number of small businesses and individuals and to this day Comcast is still presumably guilty of throttling users' VPN traffic (a quick google search will return dozens of user complaints re: Comcast vs VPN). Short of a class action lawsuit, small businesses and individuals are never going to get Comcast to stop messing with VPN traffic, especially without a solid foundation like them being in violation of Net Neutrality rules to take them to court over.