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☆ Turkey suspended trade with Israel pending a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. Here's what that could mean for Israel.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-05 | by ( Katie Balevic | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Turkey has suspended trade with Israel, demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. AdvertisementTurkey halted trade with Israel last week, demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and criticizing Western influence in the war. That's a significant portion of Israel's trade, according to recent trade data. Though they didn't name the United States, Turkish leaders also called out the West's tolerance and support of the war. The United States abstained from the vote, sparking sharp dissent from Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.

Persons: Israel, —, Tayyip Erdogan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Netanyahu, Joe Biden, Erdogan Organizations: Service, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Reuters, MIT Media Lab, United Nations, United Locations: Turkey, Israel, Gaza, Rafah, That's, China, United States

☆ Facial recognition tech is widespread now, but still might not recognize you
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-14 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Facial recognition frequently misidentifies people of colorMIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini found that facial recognition technology misidentified black women up to 35% of the time, the New York Times reported in 2018. When fewer photos of people from other racial and gender groups are used, facial recognition tech is less accurate at identifying people of those backgrounds, the study said. In some cases, it's possible to opt out of using facial recognition technology — and its high error rate. But sidestepping facial recognition often isn't possible, said Gideon Christian, a law professor at the University of Calgary who has written about the legal and societal aspects of facial recognition technology. AdvertisementThe FTC banned Rite Aid from using facial recognition technology in stores for five years as a result.

Persons: —, Spark, Joy Buolamwini, shoplifters haven't, Gideon Christian, Samuel Levine, Christian Organizations: Service, TSA, Business, MIT Media, New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Walmart, CBP, University of Calgary, FTC, FTC's, Consumer Protection, Rite Aid Locations: India

☆ Kate’s doctored photo raises concerns about tools that let everyone easily edit images
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-11 | by ( Brian Fung | Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Although celebrities have altered photos with editing tools for years, images taken of the royal family have a historical importance and are expected to be authentic. The use of image editing to present a false narrative goes back almost to the dawn of photography itself. Image tools with generative AI will allow so much more than photo manipulation because people will be able to create images from completely new scenarios. As AI images hit the mainstream, it will open up more discussions around transparency and the need to regulate usage so news outlets and the public can better spot AI-generated and augmented images, he said. Although AI image watermarks already being implemented on certain platforms, mandating that will be a challenge, Hayden said.

Persons: Catherine , Princess of Wales, Wales, Kate, ”, Princess of, Prince Louis, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Princess, Google’s, Ramesh Raskar, who’s, Raskar, Reece Hayden, Hayden Organizations: CNN, Kensington Palace, Agence France, Presse, Reuters, Associated Press, Adobe, Google, MIT Media, Apple, Facebook, ABI Research Locations: Princess of Wales, Kensington

☆ Bridgit Mendler went from Disney star to space startup CEO with $6.3M in funding—it started with an accidental college major
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-21 | by ( Ashton Jackson | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Bridgit Mendler's path from Disney Channel star to space startup CEO started with — quite literally — an accident. The 31-year-old is the CEO and co-founder of Northwood Space, a company based in El Segundo, California that aims to mass-produce ground stations — otherwise known as the antennae that communicate with space satellites. "While everybody else was making their sourdough starters [during the Covid-19 pandemic], we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot ... and receiving data from [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] satellites," Mendler told CNBC on Monday while announcing her startup. "I'm studying anthropology," Mendler told ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in 2015. While at Harvard, she served as co-president of the Harvard Space Law Society, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Persons: —, Charlie, Mendler, ABC's, Jimmy Kimmel, Griffin, Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel's Organizations: Disney Channel, Northwood, National Oceanic, Administration, CNBC, University of Southern, USC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Media Lab, Harvard Law School, Harvard, Harvard Space Law Society, Founders, Humba Ventures, Elon, SpaceX, Technologies, Northrop Grumman Locations: El Segundo , California, University of Southern California, Northwood

Neri Oxman , a former MIT professor and celebrity within the world of academia, stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars, and technical documents in her academic writing, Business Insider has found. AdvertisementNeri Oxman directly copied from Wikipedia in her Ph.D. dissertationOn page 81 of her dissertation, "Material-based Design Computation," Oxman published two sentences without attribution that had previously appeared on Wikipedia. Business InsiderThe Wikipedia article for "Weaving" featured virtually identical sentences in April 2010 , when Oxman's dissertation was submitted. Business InsiderOxman's cribbing from the "Weaving" article was one of 15 examples that BI found Oxman plagiarizing from a Wikipedia article in her dissertation. The bulk of the plagiarism BI found was in her dissertation, which runs more than 300 pages.

Persons: Neri Oxman, Oxman, Bill Ackman, Ackman, Claudine Gay, Gay, Claudine Gay's, It's, Rick Norwood, silkworms, Wolfram MathWorld, M.Y . Zhou, Bruno Zevi, Sally Kornbluth Organizations: MIT, Pershing, Capital Management, Washington Free Beacon, Business, Creative, East Tennessee State University, MIT Media, Rhino, BI, Da Capo Press, MIT Corporation, Eastern Tennessee State University Locations: Gaza

☆ Americans aren't mixing with people in different income brackets or leaving their neighborhoods as much as they did before the pandemic
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Eliza Relman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Americans are mixing with each other and exploring the cities they live in less frequently, a new study found. They found that Americans' behavior has significantly shifted since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study tracked visits to 433,000 "point of interest" locations, including museums, parks, coffee shops, and grocery stores. And the researchers used Census data to categorize people in four income brackets based on the average income of the census block they lived in. Los Angeles saw the largest drop in diverse interactions, while Dallas, where pandemic restrictions were the least severe, saw the smallest change.

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - A social media influencer who once had 58,000 Twitter followers was convicted by a federal jury of election interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race over a voter suppression scheme, the Justice Department said late on Friday. Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted of the charge of conspiracy against rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote, the Justice Department said in a statement. In 2016, Mackey, 33, established an audience on Twitter with 58,000 followers. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, Vaughn has in the past openly supported hate groups. Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Editing by Franklin PaulOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ The Pentagon once hid 10 giant red balloons across the US — and offered $40,000 to the first people to find them all
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Chris Panella | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The Pentagon's DARPA group once challenged people to find 10 giant red balloons across the US. Those locations included Union Square in San Francisco, Collins Avenue in Miami, Lee Park in Memphis, Tennessee, and Katy Park in Katy, Texas, Popular Science reported. MIT Media Lab Postdoctoral Human Dynamics researcher Riley Crane, who led MIT's successful group, told Popular Science. Twitter also proved to be useful for the challenge, allowing quick and widespread conversation about the possible locations of the balloons, Popular Science reported. But Crane told Popular Science that MIT's strategy focused more on creating a trusted team with goals of helping themselves, science, and charity.

☆ Nina Montée Karp and Dr. Harvey Karp turned the $1,700 Snoo into the holy grail of parenting. But some say they overhyped the crib's abilities and created a nightmarish corporate culture.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Kate Taylor | Jake Swearingen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +31 min

Karp and Montée Karp built the hype into a parenting-media empire that put out three books and two instructional films in 10 years. Karp and Montée Karp met at a Hollywood party in the early '90s. Karp and Montée Karp promised her independence and flexibility to accommodate her two young children's day-care schedules and a 90-minute commute. Karp and Montée Karp insisted on being involved in minutiae that most top executives hand off. Karp and Montée Karp turned the Snoo into an award-winning holy grail of parenthood in just a few years.

☆ A husband-wife duo turned the $1,700 Snoo into the holy grail of parenting, but some say they run their company like a dysfunctional 'surveillance state'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Kate Taylor | Jake Swearingen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +31 min

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried was the poster boy for 'effective altruism.' Now, its followers are heartbroken and critics are questioning its 'weird' funding setup.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Sam Bankman-Fried was a proponent of effective altruism: earning as much as possible to give your wealth away. He had a huge influence on the effective-altruism movement, which counts Silicon Valley tech workers and Oxford University academics among its fans. 'Devastated'Bankman-Fried was the main funder of Future Fund, a charitable project run by the FTX Foundation. "We joined the Future Fund to support incredible people and projects," they said, "and this outcome is heartbreaking to us." Science groups that had received money from the Future Fund told the magazine Science in mid-November that they were unsure of their funding's future.

☆ Palm oil is in almost everything, and it's devastating rainforests. This Bill Gates-backed company used microbes to create an alternative
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

Palm oil grows best in the regions right around the equator, so palm oil producers chop down rainforest and clear that felled vegetation by burning it, making it a prime target of conservation organizations like the Rainforest Rescue and the World Wildlife Fund. Palm oil trees grow at the Cikasungka palm oil plantation, operated by PT Perkebunan Nusantara VIII, in Bogor Regency in West Java, Indonesia, on Monday, June 20, 2022. To make its palm oil alternative, C16 Biosciences uses a wild yeast microbe that makes a functional equivalent to palm oil with a kind of fermentation process. Photo courtesy: Cat Clifford, CNBCChemically, the palm oil that C16 Biosciences makes is not identical to the palm oil that is grown in industrial agriculture farms. However, "it contains the same fatty acids, which are the molecular fingerprints of fats and oils, that palm oil does," Heller told CNBC.

(foto) Un român a inventat o mască de protecție inteligentă, care se conectează la telefonO mască de protecție inteligentă, echipată cu senzori de temperatură și sistem de filtrare a aerului, a fost realizată de un român și a fost premiată la un concurs de re-imaginare a măștilor de protecție, organizat de MIT Media Lab. Masca, botezată Social Mask, se conectează la o aplicație din telefonul mobil pentru a verifica proximitatea purtătorului față de alți utilizatori și să determine posibilitatea unei infecții virale, se arată în prezentarea produsului. Cu un aspect modern, masca este realizată din policarbonat sau polipropilenă, pentru a nu provoca alergii. Dispozitivul a fost creat de românul Ciprian Burzo, scrie digi24.ro. „Ar trebui să știm cine este infectat în zonă și să primim informații pe telefon despre ce particule detectează biosenzorul în mediul ambiant.

Persons: Ciprian Organizations: MIT Media

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