Most of Axon’s ethics board has resigned over the company’s fast-tracked idea for a Taser-equipped drone, swiftly collapsing the most prominent advisory panel in the police technology industry. Following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Axon announced last week plans to mount its Taser weapons on autonomous drones in order to stop school shootings. The idea sparked concerns about privacy, safety, and potential abuses, and blindsided the legal experts, technologists and former
A number of high-profile whistleblowers in the technology industry have stepped into the spotlight in the past few years. For the most part, they have been revealing corporate practices that thwart the public interest: Frances Haugen exposed personal data exploitation at Meta, Timnit Gebru and Rebecca Rivers challenged Google on ethics and AI issues, and Janneke Parrish raised concerns about a discriminatory work culture at Apple, among others. Many of these whistleblowers ar
Whether you’re a new Gmail user or you’ve been using the service since it turned out to not be an elaborate April Fools’ joke back in 2004, there’s a strong chance you’re still not getting enough out of it, productivity-wise. In that spirit, here’s a handful of my personal favorite hidden gems that most people haven’t turned on, haven’t discovered, or have just plain forgotten about. Get more stars to play with Starring important messages i
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. A Padlet is a digital bulletin board. It’s a simple canvas for adding, organizing, and sharing information. It can be used flexibly for almost any purpose, from gathering ideas in a meeting to mapping out elements of an upcoming project. Designed for teachers, Padlets work well for gathering thoughts in a visual way. How to Create a
A popular joke circulating online among Russian dissidents goes something like this: A Moscovite wife asks her husband if he understands what the war in Ukraine is about. Yes, thunders the husband, repeating the regime’s talking points—it’s a Russian campaign against NATO’s aggression! The wife continues, asking how the war is going, and here the husband grows somber, saying that the brave Russian military has sustained heavy losses, including more than 18,000 dead. A
Over the last few weeks, I’ve taken a trip back to the early 2010s, watching Jared Leto, Amanda Seyfried, and Joseph Gordon Levitt bring some of the most infamous tech founders and their fall-from-grace-stories alive on the silver screen. I was an early employee at food delivery and health tech startups during this pivotal time in the tech industry’s history. I remember navigating our own highs and lows while reading headlines about #DeleteUber or Elizabeth Holmes denying the Wall
In the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead, many are looking to the tech industry to deliver solutions. But at least one company’s proposal raises more questions than answers. Axon, which makes Tasers, body-worn cameras and other technology for law enforcement, announced on Thursday that it plans to mount Tasers on drones, as part of a solution to America’s problem with school shooters. “This network of cameras, with human and AI monitoring, togethe
It turns out, the “Tinder Swindler” wasn’t the only one allegedly scamming romantic partners. According to a new report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Americans have been scammed out of more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2021; and a large chunk—$185 million—was lost in so-called romance scams, which are on the rise. Additionally, more than half of all losses —$575 million—went to bogus crypto investment opportu
It was an early-career tragedy that inspired Australian neurologist Tom Oxley to work on a new kind of brain-computer interface. When Oxley was beginning his neurology training, he worked with a patient who was so diminished by a stroke that he couldn’t move anything but his eyes. The man—only 40, and the CEO of a company—made it clear that he didn’t want to live in his current “locked-in” condition. He wanted to die. So the doctors obliged him, doi
The demand for electric vehicles is on the rise. Global EV sales more than doubled in the first quarter of the year, and about one out of every 10 new cars sold today is electric. However, the supply cannot catch up. The EV battery industry is not sustainable in its current form. Battery makers are facing shortages from all sides. Their most important raw material, lithium, is in short supply. There’s plenty of lithium in the Earth’s crust, but accessibility is an issue. Lithium fr