Is “coordinated inauthentic behavior” a fancy
way to say ‘spreading fake news?” What happens if they determine
that the Democrats/Republicans are behind it?
Removing
Bad Actors on Facebook
Today we removed 32 Pages and accounts from
Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated
inauthentic behavior. This kind of behavior is not allowed on
Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating
networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what
they’re doing.
We’re still in the very early stages of our
investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be
behind this.
(Related) Because he’s an American?
Why LeBron
Can Say Whatever He Wants About Politics
LeBron James attended
a Cleveland campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in 2016 even
though she was likely to lose his home state of Ohio.
After Donald Trump’s election, James repeatedly
blasted
the president. When Laura Ingraham said James should “shut up and
dribble,” he rebutted
the Fox News host by saying he had never heard of her before her
remark. And now this: On Monday, James wouldn’t
rule out running for president in 2020.
… But I don’t think James really has to
worry about any backlash. The wall between the worlds of sports and
politics has increasingly
broken down, and James’s place in those worlds gives him extra
protection.
1. His fans are mostly Democrats
2. His political tactics are quite mild, particularly considering the
context
3. He’s not alone
4. James is really, really good at basketball
IF the NBA can do this for MGM, could Facebook use
the same tech to eliminate Fake News?
NBA inks
deal with MGM Resorts to provide data to bettors
The NBA and WNBA will now share official
data with MGM Resorts International, a major win for the
leagues as they prepare for the anticipated
growth of sports betting across the country.
The Las Vegas-based casino giant will pay the NBA
for that data to use in determining outcomes of various bets. The
NBA's stance has been that getting
accurate stats to bettors is critical so players know what
they're betting on and so casinos will know when to pay out, and MGM
Resorts is the first casino to make an arrangement with the league
for those numbers.
… How MGM will get that data remains unclear.
NBA stat data is distributed globally by
Sportradar, which sends it to media outlets, broadcasters and betting
outlets outside the U.S. — but not inside this country, at least
for now.
… MGM will be an official casino partner for
the league, but will not have exclusive rights to the data. The NBA
still can, and likely will, try to make deals with other casinos who
will be offering sports betting in various states or through mobile
apps.
The deal also won't stop other casino companies
from offering wagers on NBA games, including prop bets that rely on
results other than the final score.
Another “news” manipulation story. Do all
reviews at TripAdvisor pass through the organization being reviewed?
Seems made for manipulation.
Australian
hotelier Meriton fined A$3m for manipulating TripAdvisor reviews
The Australian hotel operator owned by billionaire
Harry Triguboff was fined A$3 million (S$3.03 million) on Tuesday for
misleading customers, after it
withheld unhappy guests' details from travel site
TripAdvisor Inc to avoid bad reviews.
Between November 2014 and October 2015, Meriton
Serviced Apartments falsified
or held back the contact details of customers it thought
might be critical at 13 properties, Australia's Federal Court found.
The company's booking software allowed staff to
add letters to customers' email addresses to stop TripAdvisor from
reaching them if they had made complaints during their stay. It
also held back reviews during maintenance periods at the
hotels.
… The Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC), which brought the proceedings against Meriton, had
initially sought a A$20 million penalty.
"This case sends a strong message that
businesses can expect ACCC enforcement action if they're caught
manipulating feedback on third party review websites," ACCC
Commissioner Sarah Court said in a statement.
What would an “ethical programming” class look
like?
Liability
and Risk in Programming Autonomous Vehicles
… We are about to undergo a paradigm shift
from passive response-based systems in cars (such as cruise control,
lane-change warning alarms, obstacle alarms and so on) to fully
active systems. This is where an autonomous vehicle, having
processed various inputs from multiple sensors, having (in some
implementations) integrated those inputs with externally supplied
data (for example from sensors transmitting from road signs or from
the road itself), takes a decision on what to do – how much to
accelerate or to brake, how to turn the wheel, etc.
… . This is the field of so-called
‘electro-ethics’. Electro-ethics
is the intersection of technology, law and moral philosophy. To
enable machines to perform sophisticated decision-making to complete
complex tasks, software designers need to develop sets of rules that
will underpin decisions made in any situation. It is impossible to
program on a situational basis, so higher level guiding principles
need to be programmed with clarity so any situation can be dealt with
safely and properly.
Who knew our programming classes were “Pre-Law?”
Paper –
Replacing Law with Computer Code
Micheler, Eva and Whaley, Anna, Regulatory
Technology – Replacing Law with Computer Code (July 9, 2018). LSE
Legal Studies Working Paper No. 14/2018. Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3210962
“Recently both the Bank of England and the
Financial Conduct Authority have carried out experiments using new
digital technology for regulatory purposes. The
idea is to replace rules written in natural legal language with
computer code and to use artificial intelligence for regulatory
purposes. This new way of designing public law is in line
with the government’s vision for the UK to become a global leader
in digital technology. It is also reflected in the FCA’s business
plan. The article reviews the technology and the advantages and
disadvantages of combining the technology with regulatory law. It
then informs the discussion from a broader public law perspective.
It analyses regulatory technology through criteria developed in the
mainstream regulatory discourse. It contributes to that discourse by
anticipating problems that will arise as the technology evolves. In
addition, the hope is to assist the government in avoiding mistakes
that have occurred in the past and creating a better system from the
start.”
Perspective. Who has the power here, Kroger or
Visa. Would Amazon just issue its own card?
Report:
Nation's largest grocery chain may ban Visa transactions
Grocery chain Kroger is reportedly considering
banning all Visa card transactions at its locations throughout the
United States due to a dispute on swipe fees, Bloomberg reported.
… According to the National Retail Federation,
roughly 2 percent of all transactions go toward swipe fees.
Interesting. Great use of graphics!
Here’s
How America Uses Its Land
Bloomberg:
“There are many statistical measures that show how productive the
U.S. is. Its economy is the largest in the world and grew at a rate
of 4.1 percent last quarter, its fastest pace since 2014. The
unemployment rate is near the lowest mark in a half century . What
can be harder to decipher is how Americans use their land to create
wealth. The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw
puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to
feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business
and pleasure… Using surveys, satellite images and categorizations
from various government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
divides the U.S. into six major types of land. The data can’t be
pinpointed to a city block—each square on the map represents
250,000 acres of land. But piecing the data together state-by-state
can give a general sense of how U.S. land is used. Gathered
together, cropland would take up more than a fifth of the 48
contiguous states. Pasture and rangeland would cover most of the
Western U.S., and all of the country’s cities and towns would fit
neatly in the Northeast…”
A note for my website students.
I’ve been tutoring the wrong things. No more
Math and Computer Science for me!
Parents
Hiring Fortnite Coaches to Improve Play, Help Children Level Up
On Tuesday, Sarah
E. Needleman of the Wall Street Journal reported parents
are throwing down between $10 and $20 per hour so their kids can
level up and become better Fortnite players.
"There's pressure not to just play it but to
be really good at it," Ally Hicks, who purchased four hours of
lessons for her 10-year-old son, told the WSJ. "You
can imagine what that was like for him at school."
… In some cases, it's paying off. Nick Mennen
told the Wall Street Journal his 12-year-old son, Noble,
struggled to win on the highly competitive Fortnite landscape.
"Now he'll throw down 10 to 20 wins,"
Mennen said.
The demand for coaches may continue to grow with
the latest
update from Epic in June placing the player count at 125 million.
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