Google Human Location Tracking Reports
As global communities respond to COVID-19, we’ve heard from public health officials that the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights we use in products such as Google Maps could be helpful as they make critical decisions to combat COVID-19.
These Community Mobility Reports aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.
How Google Ruined the Internet
Rewarding stupidity and laziness leads to more stupidity and laziness
Remember that story about the Polish dentist who pulled out all of her ex-boyfriend’s teeth in an act of revenge? It was complete and utter bullshit. 100% fabricated. No one knows who wrote it.
Nevertheless, it was picked up by Fox News, the Los Angeles Times and many other publishers. That was eight years ago, yet when I search now for “dentist pulled ex boyfriends teeth,” I get a featured snippet that quotes ABC News’ original, uncorrected story.
Who invented the fidget spinner? Ask Google Assistant and it will tell you that Catherine Hettinger did: a conclusion based on poorly-reported stories from The Guardian, The New York Times and other major news outlets. Bloomberg’s Joshua Brustein clearly demonstrated that Ms. Hettinger did not invent the low friction toy. Nevertheless, ask Google Assistant “who really invented the fidget spinner?” and you’ll get the same answer: Catherine Hettinger.
The friendly Mr Wu
When Candace Claiborne arrived in Beijing in November 2009 to work for the US State Department, her employer was already on edge. The American embassy had just moved from a building at the heart of the city’s diplomatic district to a ten-acre walled compound farther from the centre, a $434m fortress that projected both power and fear. The complex featured shatterproof glass, multiple checkpoints and a moat. To prevent Chinese agents from bugging offices, whole sections of the building had been shipped in from America, a tactic used previously when several floors of the US embassy in Moscow had to be razed following a breach in the 1980s. Even with all the safeguards, it turned out that two American construction workers had passed details about the building to China’s intelligence services. The news rattled policymakers in Washington, DC, who were watching China’s rapid economic and political rise with trepidation. The work environment that Claiborne would inhabit for the next three years included frequent security briefings and warnings about the cunning of China’s intelligence services. “I always tell the men, ‘Go look in the mirror. No beautiful woman, attractive woman, goes up to 50-year-old men,’” said one State Department official.
Though the embassy’s security staff had much to worry about, Claiborne was not an obvious source of concern. A 53-year-old mother of four grown children, Claiborne had the poise and manner of someone used to disciplined work. As a young woman she had dreamed of becoming a ballerina, and worked toward this goal with such dedication that she was admitted to the prestigious Washington School of Ballet. She came from a family committed to service – one brother went into the air force and another into the FBI – but Claiborne decided to follow her dream, and packed up her leotards to move to New York. She had some small victories, but the dance world was cut-throat and sustained success eluded her. After an ill-fated marriage, Claiborne ended up following her siblings into the family business. She became one of the hundreds of unlauded but vital administrators trained by the State Department to keep diplomats’ calendars, prepare agendas for meetings and take notes. Claiborne worked in the part of the embassy that handled classified information, and had top-secret security clearance.
She had lived in Beijing on an earlier tour, following it up with a posting to Shanghai. Normally, the State Department caps employees at two tours in a single country and additional stints require a special waiver. The department’s intelligence officers worry that if a person spends too long in one place, he or she might adopt a casual attitude toward potential security threats. But it was hard to persuade people to go to China, and Claiborne, who didn’t have so much as a parking ticket to her name, passed her security reviews easily. She did have one glaring vulnerability, however, which the State Department apparently overlooked.
China, coronavirus and surveillance: the messy reality of personal data
Yuan Yang, Nian Liu, Sue-Lin Wong and Qianer Liu:
Three days after the Chinese government locked down Hubei, the province at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, a local government official more than 1,000km away received data from telecoms carriers alerting her to a list of people who had left Hubei and entered her town.
The data included traces of the estimated locations of users’ mobile phones, showing that many had driven back along the highways from Hubei to Guangdong province in southern China, where the official works in a small town. The location data helped the official’s team “more or less” pin down everyone who came back from Hubei, she said.
But for another Guangdong town, the information it was able to get hold of was much less comprehensive.
“We did identify one man from Hubei on the list who was high-risk. We searched everywhere for him but just couldn’t track him down,” a second official told the Financial Times, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Credentials alone no longer make one credible”
This is where Fauci shines. He’s showing us how to be not just trustworthy but actually trusted.
The role is still fundamentally about providing accurate information. Fauci is fighting the outbreak with “the sledgehammer of truth,” as the Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty put it—helping everyone to understand the real dimensions of the problem in spite of widespread misinformation and politics-driven fact-spinning.
But what makes him so helpful and credible has to do with how he provides the information, and what’s especially powerful about his approach is that he’s more or less the opposite of a sledgehammer. He is grounded in humility and humanity: he uses plain language; he admits uncertainties and failings; he seems to be at pains to say that he has a special perspective, “as a scientist,” rather than the only possibly useful view; he refuses to make the science overtly political; he is gracious and cautious when offering corrections.
In the midst of this transformation, what it means to be an expert has also changed. At one time, one could qualify as an expert just by being particularly smart or well educated about a technical topic and having been anointed as an expert by other experts, like university officials or political leaders. Think of 1950s scientists and doctors whose lab coats signified their training and the respect and deference they deserved.
Today, more is required. To qualify as an expert is to meet the criteria for a special social role, and nowadays, having the requisite knowledge, ability and recognition is only part of what one needs. Credentials alone no longer make one credible.
This is where Fauci shines. He’s showing us how to be not just trustworthy but actually trusted.
The role is still fundamentally about providing accurate information. Fauci is fighting the outbreak with “the sledgehammer of truth,” as the Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty put it—helping everyone to understand the real dimensions of the problem in spite of widespread misinformation and politics-driven fact-spinning.
But what makes him so helpful and credible has to do with how he provides the information, and what’s especially powerful about his approach is that he’s more or less the opposite of a sledgehammer. He is grounded in humility and humanity: he uses plain language; he admits uncertainties and failings; he seems to be at pains to say that he has a special perspective, “as a scientist,” rather than the only possibly useful view; he refuses to make the science overtly political; he is gracious and cautious when offering corrections.
Rather different than “we know best“.
“The last shall be first and the first shall be last”. – duckduckgo links.
“Focus needs to shift to alternative ways of showcasing products to allow consumers to experience products and services outside the store as much as possible”
Key report findings include:
The pandemic will have long-term impacts on what consumers want to purchase as well as how they purchase them. In addition to the inevitable increased use of delivery services for grocery and food, alternative shopping experiences such as Amazon Go’s contactless shopping experience – where consumers do not have to proceed through a checkout experience – will also see a boost in popularity.
Consumers don’t believe use of personal data leads to more relevant ads, report finds
While the use of consumer data is a widespread advertising and marketing tactic, the majority of people are still not okay with it and don’t believe it benefits them, according to a new GroupM report.
The survey of nearly 14,000 middle income consumers in 23 countries found 61 percent of consumers are less inclined to use a product if their personal data is used for any purpose, while 56 percent of consumers want more control over their data.
“It is a staple of the advertising industry to claim that data collection benefits consumers because they are shown ads of greater relevance to them. In our study, only 18 percent of consumers believe that,” said Chris Myers, regional director, GroupM APAC.
Ted Chiang on how we may never go “back to normal”—and why that might be a good thing
TC: The familiar is always comfortable, but we need to make a distinction between what is actually desirable and what is simply what we’re accustomed to; sometimes those are the same, and sometimes they are not. The people who are the happiest with the status quo are the ones who benefit most from it, which is why the wealthy are usually conservative; the existing order works to their advantage. For example, right now there’s a discussion taking place about canceling student debt, and a related discussion about why there is such a difference in the type of financial relief available to individuals as opposed to giant corporations. The people who will be happiest to return to our existing system of debt are the ones who benefit from it, and making them uncomfortable might be a good idea.
Morning Walk
