New York Takes Crucial Step Toward Making Congestion Pricing a Reality
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/nyregion/nyc-congestion-pricing-tolls-mta.html [www.nytimes.com]
2024-03-27 21:14
tags:
cars
policy
urban
The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to approve a new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan. The plan still faces challenges from six lawsuits before it can begin in June.
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Tron”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/13/opinion/jodorowsky-dune-ai-tron.html [www.nytimes.com]
2023-01-21 19:35
tags:
ai
graphics
movies
photos
I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 version of “Tron.” The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.
The truth is that these weren’t stills from a long-lost movie. They weren’t photos at all. These evocative, well-composed and tonally immaculate images were generated in seconds with the magic of artificial intelligence.
The “interactive” elements are annoying, but some pretty pictures here.
source: DF
When It Comes to Octopuses, Taste Is for Suckers
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/science/octopus-arms-taste.html [www.nytimes.com]
2020-11-02 04:10
tags:
biology
food
paper
How Giant Ships Are Built
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/17/business/economy/how-container-ships-are-built.html [www.nytimes.com]
2020-06-17 23:19
tags:
architecture
photos
transport
Almost everything at this American shipyard exists at enormous scale. Vessels are constructed over years. Experience is developed over decades. The work is so spread out across the yard and over time that, to the untrained eye, it can be difficult to tell what is being hammered, wired or welded — and whether it’s right-side up or upside down.
When finished, more than a hundred pieces are fused into a hulking mass of metal that will be set afloat to connect an ever-shrinking world.
The U.S. Is Getting Shorter, as Mapmakers Race to Keep Up
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/science/maps-elevation-geodetic-survey.html [www.nytimes.com]
2020-05-22 20:45
tags:
article
geology
maps
visualization
Scientists are hard at work recalibrating where and how the nation physically sits on the planet. It’s not shrinkage — it’s “height modernization.”
The grand recalibration, called “height modernization,” is part of a broader effort within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to establish more accurately where and how the United States physically sits on the planet. This new National Spatial Reference System, encompassing height, latitude, longitude and time, is expected to be rolled out in late 2022 or 2023, Ms. Blackwell said. It will replace reference systems from the 1980s that are slightly askew, having been derived from calculations that were done before the advent of supercomputers or global navigation satellite systems such as GPS.
Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-12-20 23:43
tags:
android
best
investigation
iphone
opsec
tech
visualization
Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers.
source: L
The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/nyregion/nyc-subway-map.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-12-03 02:06
tags:
design
maps
nyc
slides
urban
visualization
The three ins of web design: interesting and infuriatingly interactive.
source: DF
Imagine Being on Trial. With Exonerating Evidence Trapped on Your Phone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/business/law-enforcement-public-defender-technology-gap.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-11-25 01:39
tags:
android
hoipolloi
investigation
iphone
opsec
policy
tech
Public defenders lack access to gadgets and software that could keep their clients out of jail.
This tech gap has two basic forms. First, law enforcement agencies can use warrants and court orders to compel companies to turn over emails, photos and other communications, but defense lawyers have no such power. And second, the government has access to forensic technology that makes digital investigations easier. Over the last two decades, the machines and software designed to extract data from computers and smartphones were primarily made for and sold to law enforcement.
To successfully defend its clients, the Legal Aid Society, New York City’s largest public defender office, realized in 2013 that it needed to buy the same tools the police had: forensic devices and software from companies including Cellebrite, Magnet Forensics and Guidance Software. Not only does the expensive technology unearth digital evidence that is otherwise hard or impossible to find, it captures it in a format that can hold up in court, as opposed to evidence that could have been tampered with or forged.
source: green
On the Internet, No One Knows You’re Not Rich. Except This Account.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/style/baller-busters-online-scams.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-11-12 03:27
tags:
factcheck
hoipolloi
social
In February, an Instagram account called @BallerBusters cropped up and began wreaking havoc on the flashy Instagram entrepreneur community.
Its goal: To expose phony entrepreneurs. Using a mix of screen-shotted receipts, memes and crowdsourced information from followers, the account seeks out people who don’t “act their wage.”
Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-11-05 03:54
tags:
essay
hoipolloi
movie
Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.
Besides a bit of old fashioned hand wringing here and there, a fairly level take, although I’m not sure how much I can bring myself to care.
source: HN
I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score. Now You Can Get Yours, Too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-consumer-score-access.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-11-04 17:06
tags:
business
life
opsec
Little-known companies are amassing your data — like food orders and Airbnb messages — and selling the analysis to clients. Here’s how to get a copy of what they have on you.
As of this summer, though, Sift does have a file on you, which it can produce upon request. I got mine, and I found it shocking: More than 400 pages long, it contained all the messages I’d ever sent to hosts on Airbnb; years of Yelp delivery orders; a log of every time I’d opened the Coinbase app on my iPhone. Many entries included detailed information about the device I used to do these things, including my IP address at the time.
source: HN
Cars Were Banned on 14th Street. The Apocalypse Did Not Come.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/nyregion/14th-street-cars-banned.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-10-14 01:43
tags:
cars
nyc
policy
transport
urban
valley
Where Theory Meets Chalk, Dust Flies
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/science/mathematicians-blackboard-photographs-jessica-wynne.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-09-27 21:01
tags:
academia
math
photos
visualization
A photo survey of the blackboards of mathematicians.
For the last year, Jessica Wynne, a photographer and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, has been photographing mathematicians’ blackboards, finding art in the swirling gangs of symbols sketched in the heat of imagination, argument and speculation. “Do Not Erase,” a collection of these images, will be published by Princeton University Press in the fall of 2020.
source: K
WeWork C.E.O., Adam Neumann, Stepping Down Under Pressure
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/business/dealbook/wework-ceo-adam-neumann.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-09-24 18:01
tags:
business
valley
The Roots of Boeing’s 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-07-28 00:49
tags:
business
development
flying
policy
In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board.
Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017.
source: HN
Google’s 4,000-Word Privacy Policy Is a Secret History of the Internet
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/10/opinion/google-privacy-policy.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-07-10 22:43
tags:
business
hoipolloi
ideas
life
valley
web
The late 1990s was a simpler time for Google. The nascent company was merely a search engine, and Gmail, Android and YouTube were but glimmers in the startup’s eye. Google’s first privacy policy reflected that simplicity. It was short and earnest, a quaint artifact of a different time in Silicon Valley, when Google offered 600 words to explain how it was collecting and using personal information.
That version of the internet (and Google) is gone. Over the past 20 years, that same privacy policy has been rewritten into a sprawling 4,000-word explanation of the company’s data practices.
This evolution, across two decades and 30 versions, is the story of the internet’s transformation through the eyes of one of its most crucial entities. The web is now terribly complex, and Google has a privacy policy to match.
source: HN
Trump Consultant Is Trolling Democrats With Biden Site That Isn’t Biden’s
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/us/politics/fake-joe-biden-website.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-07-02 19:53
tags:
article
hoipolloi
ideas
media
web
For much of the last three months, the most popular Joseph R. Biden Jr. website has been a slick little piece of disinformation that is designed to look like the former vice president’s official campaign page, yet is most definitely not pro-Biden.
The website’s success was not accidental. Mr. Mauldin put it up well before Mr. Biden’s official website and aggressively pushed it out on Reddit, getting clicks and links and exposure. It had a big boost in May when a handful of media outlets — The Daily Caller and CNET, among others — wrote stories about the fake page beating Mr. Biden’s and linked to it. Links from established media websites are weighted heavily by search engines.
Hey everybody, look at this thing we don’t want people to see!
source: grugq
Would You Pay $30 a Month to Check Your Email?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-07-02 18:44
tags:
email
valley
“We have insane levels of virality that haven’t been seen since Dropbox or Slack,” Mr. Vohra added.
And it gets worse after that.
Rain Much on Your Vacation? One Italian Island Offers Hotel Refunds
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/world/europe/italy-island-elba-refund.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-05-21 01:45
tags:
business
travel
But beginning this month, the Italian island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, started offering tourists an unexpected guarantee: Hotels will refund guests if it rains.
source: MR
You’re About to Get Fewer Robocalls. But Maybe Not for Long.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/opinion/robocalls-phone-scams.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-04-25 02:09
tags:
networking
policy
tech
Major telecom companies, including AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile and Verizon, have announced that they will voluntarily adopt the dual technologies known as Secure Telephone Identity Revisited and Signature-Based Handling of Asserted Information Using Tokens, known collectively as STIR/Shaken.
The industrywide use of STIR/Shaken should hamper the prolific robocall industry by making it harder to fake calling from a number belonging to someone else. But will that be enough to end the onslaught of robocalls we all live with today?