no more cubes

Tag: big tech

  • Quitting Google

    Nithin Coca of The Next Web went on a quest to quitting Google. In this article, he describes his experience and gives plenty of pointers on how to achieve the same. He start out making a point about individual privacy, and points out individual alternatives to popular Google services. Starting from using Firefox over Chrome to particular services for daily office use. At the end of the year, this little “Quitting Google” guide contains little news, but serves as a good starting point to maybe develop a new years resolution and be more sensitive about privacy in the upcoming year 2020.

    Nithin Coca of The Next Web
    Nithin Coca of The Next Web

    Over the past six months, I have gone on a surprisingly tough, time-intensive, and enlightening quest — to quit using, entirely, the products of just one company — Google. What should be a simple task was, in reality, many hours of research and testing. But I did it. Today, I am Google-free, part of the […]

    Source: How I fully quit Google (and you can, too)

  • Intel acquires Habana Labs

    Intel acquires Habana Labs: Intel put a heavy bet on Artificial Intelligence today. In a press-release, the company announced the acquisition of Habana Labs, a company founded and based in Caesarea, Israel. The deal was worth “approximately $2 billion”.

    Nerdy Unicorn
    Nerdy Unicorn

    To push its artificial intelligence strategy, Santa Clara-based Intel has acquired Israel’s Habana Labs for “approximately $2 billion dollars.”

    Source: Intel’s Latest Swing At AI Is A $2 Billion Deal From Israel

  • What Gizmodo ‘Knows’ About Facebook

    What Gizmodo ‘Knows’ About Facebook

    This Friday, Gizmodo accused Facebook of suppressing stories they published on their platform. The evidence is based on staff observations, including Family and Friends. All together, the allegations don’t appear to be very reliable, yet imaginable. Facebook acts weird all too often, and in this case Gizmodo claims the case was about news over Mark Zuckerberg, the companies CEO.

    Mark Zuckerberg

    On Friday, Gizmodo uncovered shocking new evidence that Facebook is using its platform to suppress stories about CEO Mark Zuckerberg… or maybe his janky, busted-ass website is just bugging out again for no reason. It’s hard to say, really. That’s sort of the problem.

    Gizmodo, Friday Oct. 4, 2019

    Unrelated to these new findings, Facebook has plenty of other issues, that should make them a company not to work with. The incident, and the pure possibility such a case of influence is possible, is another indicator to why society develops fear over Big Tech. The answer once more may be another call to , however, as long as Facebook has the reach and the attention, this won’t change.

    Source: What We ‘Know’ About Facebook

  • The terrifying, hidden reality of Ridiculously Complicated Algorithms

    Leseempfehlung: Ein Journalist spricht mit einem anonymen Big Data Engineer/Analyst über die Komplexität von Algorithmen. Wie erschreckend die Abhängigkeit von undurchschaubaren Komponenten geworden ist gegenüber dem Einfluss den Maschinen damit auf unser Leben haben.

    Man kann das auch als Laie verstehen, wie ich meine, selbst mein Verständnis von Big Data reicht nur so weit als das als realistisch einzuschätzen.

    ‘I’ll lose my job if anyone knows about this.”There was a long silence which I didn’t dare to break. I had begged to make this meeting happen. And now the person I had long been trying to meet leaned towards me. “Someone is going to go through your book line by line,” he said, “to try to work out who I am.”He’d been a talented researcher, an academic, until his friend started a small technology company. He had joined the company and helped it to grow. It eventually became so big that the company had been acquired by one of the tech giants. And so, then, was he.He was now paid a fortune to help design the algorithms that were central to what the tech giant did. And he had signed solemn legal documents prohibiting him from speaking to me, or to anyone, about his work. But as the…

    Source: The terrifying, hidden reality of Ridiculously Complicated Algorithms