Oct 13
William Shatner Tearfully Reflects On Trip To Space In Post-Flight Conversation
Posted in: Today's Chili“I hope I never recover from this,” a deeply emotional Shatner said.
Oct 13
Police Sergeant Charged After Video Shows Him Kicking Handcuffed Man’s Head
Posted in: Today's ChiliA federal probe has been opened after body camera footage captured Sgt. Eric Huxley stomping on Jermaine Vaughn’s face.
Oct 13
The actor gave a rousing — and cheesy! — rendition of the Elton John hit in 1978, and it’s making the rounds on Twitter.
Oct 13
Biden’s Bank Regulation Nominee Is Facing A ‘Red Scare McCarthyism’ Campaign
Posted in: Today's ChiliConservatives and banks are actually afraid of a non-captured regulator who knows the secrets of the financial sector.
Oct 13
Facebook introduces new policies to protect public figures from targeted harassment
Posted in: Today's ChiliFacebook is introducing new policies to safeguard users from online bullying and harassment. In a post attributed to Head of Safety Antigone Davis, the company said it will take down mass coordinated harassment campaigns targeted at individuals at heightened risk of offline harm. It will do so even if the content people post wouldn’t normally violate its safety guidelines. Additionally, Facebook says it will remove objectionable content in whatever form it takes, be that direct messages, comments or posts. As part of the same policy, the company will remove state-linked networks that work together to silence and harass people.
Had the above policy been in place in the past, one situation where Facebook may have enforced it was when Taylor Swift’s Instagram account was bombarded with snake emoji following a dramatic breakup with electronic producer Calvin Harris. Speaking of celebrities, the company has also put in place new protections to safeguard public figures from sexual harassment and appearance shaming. To that end, it plans to remove profiles, pages and groups dedicated to sexualizing those individuals. It will also target “severe sexualizing content,” including photoshopped images and drawings.
“We made these changes because attacks like these can weaponize a public figure’s appearance, which is unnecessary and often not related to the work these public figures represent,” the company said. Facebook will also provide additional protections for individuals who become famous involuntarily. Those may include individuals like journalists and human rights activists.
Facebook has repeatedly faced pressure to do more to prevent bullying and harassment across all of its apps, but particularly on Instagram. In the aftermath of the Euro 2020 final, which saw three Black players on the English national team face a flood of harassment after England lost to Italy, Instagram Head Adam Mosseri promised the company would introduce new features to protect users. “Racism and hate speech have no place on Instagram,” he said at the time. “It is not only honestly fucked up to see people treated that way, but it breaks how Instagram works.”
Oct 13
Amazon India allegedly copied products and promoted its own versions in searches
Posted in: Today's ChiliAmazon allegedly “ran a systematic campaign” of copying other companies’ products in India and gamed search results to promote its own versions. Reuters obtained thousands of pages of internal documents including emails and business plans that detail the practices.
A private brands team in India (which works on the company’s own products) used data from Amazon’s marketplace in the country to find and target goods and create knockoff versions, the agency reported. The goal was to find “reference” or “benchmark” wares and copy them. A document from 2016 detailed a plan for an Amazon brand called Solimo, which is tailored toward the Indian market. The aim was to “use information from Amazon.in to develop products and then leverage the Amazon.in platform to market these products to our customers.”
The document indicated that the private brands group aimed to form partnerships with the manufacturers of the benchmark items, because those companies use “unique processes which impact the end quality of the product.” The team sought to gain insights from the manufacturers and use the so-called “Tribal Knowledge” in its own versions to “fully match quality with our reference product.”
After it made the knockoffs, the company manipulated search results with a method called “search seeding” so that AmazonBasics and Solimo items would pop up near the top of the page, according to the document. The company also “aggressively” used a technique called “search sparkles on PC, Mobile and App to specifically promote Solimo products on relevant customer searches from ‘All Product Search’ and Category search,” per the document. Sparkles are the banners placed above search results.
“As Reuters hasn’t shared the documents or their provenance with us, we are unable to confirm the veracity or otherwise of the information and claims as stated,” an Amazon spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. “We believe these claims are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated.”
“Amazon identifies selection gaps based on customer preferences at an aggregate level only and shares this information with all sellers,” the spokesperson added. “Amazon’s policy strictly prohibits the use or sharing of non-public, seller-specific data for the benefit of any seller, including sellers of private brands. This policy applies uniformly across our company to all employees — our internal teams receive regular trainings on its application and we thoroughly investigate any reports of employees acting contrary to this policy.”
This is far from the first time we’ve heard reports of Amazon allegedly copying other companies’ products. Over the years, the company has been accused of cloning the Instant Pot, Allbirds sneakers and a camera bag from Peak Design to name a few. A 2020 Wall Street Journal investigation also indicated that Amazon studied sales data of third-party products on its platform to inform the design and pricing of its own goods.
Regulators in India, the US and Europe have targeted Amazon over alleged anti-competitive practices. Reuters points out that an investigation in India is looking into whether the company unfairly promoted its own branded goods.
Oct 13
Anyone who lives in a city where electric scooters are rampant has probably seen how dangerous those devices can be when they move from streets to sidewalks. Sidewalk scooter riders aren’t only way more likely to injure pedestrians and themselves when they go off-road, they also look—let’s be real—incredibly lame…
Oct 13
Discover What Really Lies Within a Dragon's Dungeon in This Dungeons & Dragons Preview
Posted in: Today's ChiliIn a few weeks, Dungeons & Dragons will lift the lid on a new sourcebook exploring one of the most fundamental and iconic creatures in its tabletop world: they’re literally in its name. Dragons have always been a huge part of D&D’s fantasy, and now io9 has got an exclusive look inside some of the rules and lore being…
Oct 13
A Birmingham-based oil and gas producer called Diversified Energy has built its business model on buying up old, low-producing gas wells which are spewing out methane, reporting from Bloomberg shows. The wells are largely not very productive—thousands of them were producing no usable gas at all at the time of…
Oct 13
Dreamworks has done very, very well with its How to Train Your Dragon franchise. Three extremely well-received movies, two animated TV series that have been running concurrently since 2012, and a horde of other media tie-ins have made it one of the most beloved kids’ series of the 21st century. So it’s surprising to…
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