Wednesday, April 19, 2023

The ruthlessness of the consulting industry

If a person is not talented enough to be a writer, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a tax officer.


What do AI chatbots know about us, and who are they sharing it with? Endgadget 


Australian technology companies that process rental applications for the real estate industry appear to be pulling back their platforms, as consumer backlash grows about the fledgling industry's allegedly "opaque" practices. 

Renters Data matching


Aussies lose record $3.1 billion to scams, with most vulnerable among hardest hit


AI Developers Stymied by Server Shortage at AWS, Microsoft, Google The Information


Workers at Meta say they got paid to do nothing: ‘They hoarded us like Pokรฉmon cards’ New York Post


The ruthlessness of the consulting industry Times Literary Supplement 


IRS Releases 2022 Data Book: Audit Rates Fell, But $80 Billion New Funding Will Reverse Trend With 7,000 More Tax Accountants, Attorneys, And Agents To Target The Rich





Lula’s Reported Statement About The “Summit For Democracy” Is A Public Relations SpectacleAndrew Korybko


Face-mask rules relaxed as hospitals to take big step away from pandemic era Independent. Ireland. Commentary:


 Insider: it puts everyone into a ‘perpetual police line-up’ – ”

  • Clearview AI scraped 30 billion photos from Facebook to build its facial recognition database.
  • US police have used the database nearly a million times, the company’s CEO told the BBC.
  • One digital rights advocate told Insider the company is “a total affront to peoples’ rights, full stop.”

A controversial facial recognition database, used by police departments across the nation, was built in part with 30 billion photos the company scraped from Facebook and other social media users without their permission, the company’s CEO recently admitted, creating what critics called a “perpetual police line-up,” even for people who haven’t done anything wrong. The company, Clearview AI, boasts of its potential for identifying rioters at the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saving children being abused or exploited, and helping exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. 

But critics point to wrongful arrests fueled by faulty identifications made by facial recognition, including cases in Detroit and New Orleans. Clearview took photos without users’ knowledge, its CEO Hoan Ton-That acknowledged in an interview last month with the BBC. Doing so allowed for the rapid expansion of the company’s massive database, which is marketed on its website to law enforcement as a tool “to bring justice to victims.” 

Ton-That told the BBC that Clearview AI’s facial recognition database has been accessed by US police nearly a million times since the company’s founding in 2017, though the relationships between law enforcement and Clearview AI remain murky and that number could not be confirmed by Insider.



Report: Crypto Is A Scam! UPDATE: We Were Wrong, Everyone Buy Crypto! UPDATE: Oops, Crypto Is A Scam! UPDATE: Well, Maybe It’s Not A Scam Now Babylon Bee


Shiver inducing

Beautiful sky collages by Alex Hynder (via Kottke) / the end of London Rental Opportunity of the Week (via MeFi) / The “Unknown Heroes” of Drum Machines / bargain lair: the Old Defensible Barracks in Dyfed (via Cal Flyn) / art by Helena Hauss / Zeppelin in flames. We wonder if related to this fragment? / 50 keyboards. See also A tale of three skeuomorphs / Goth is back / a photographic project about Peckham, by Sulky Hallait / Greg Girard’s photographs of unseen Tokyo in the 1970s / The Parish Church Photographic Survey, via the Art Newspaper / the International Women’s Day auction at Art on a Postcard / A Better Route Plannerfor EV journeys / the 15 minute city ‘conspiracy’: rarely has the point been missed so completely / the Mariko Aoki phenomenon, ‘sudden urge to defecate that is felt upon entering bookstores’ / ‘AI generates virtual 3D cities that extend infinitely in any direction‘.