Robots aren’t taking our jobs — they’re becoming our bosses- Josh Dzieza at The Verge:
On conference stages and at campaign rallies, tech executives and politicians warn of a looming automation crisis — one where workers are gradually, then all at once, replaced by intelligent machines. But their warnings mask the fact that an automation crisis has already arrived. The robots are here, they’re working in management, and they’re grinding workers into the ground.
The robots are watching over hotel housekeepers, telling them which room to clean and tracking how quickly they do it. They’re managing software developers, monitoring their clicks and scrolls and docking their pay if they work too slowly. They’re listening to call center workers, telling them what to say, how to say it, and keeping them constantly, maximally busy. While we’ve been watching the horizon for the self-driving trucks, perpetually five years away, the robots arrived in the form of the supervisor, the foreman, the middle manager.
AI supervisors drive Amazon warehouse workers to injure themselves and gobble company-supplied painkillers to keep going. AI determines whether call-center workers have enough empathy in their voices. And home-office telecommuters have their keystrokes measured and are required to turn on their webcams to be sure they’re at their desks.
How to delete all your saved articles in Instapaper
I wanted to delete all my saved Instapapaper article and make a fresh start, but had trouble figuring out how to do it. Here’s how:
From the web, find your account name on the top right, click the dropdown, and click Archive All. Then switch to the Archive folder, click the account name again, and select Delete All.
This can’t be undone.
Charlie, the store manager, 1968
“Mine’s bigger. My cucumber. It’s bigger. I think vegetables can be very sensuous, don’t you?”
One, two, and three years ago today I was in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. Four years ago today was our nieces' Carly and Emma’s B’Not Bitzvah.
Mayor Pete says it’s ok to mix ranch dressing and salsa.
I’ve never tried this combination, or even thought of trying it. Gotta admit, it sounds tasty.
“My Ex-Boyfriend’s New Girlfriend Is Lady Gaga” - Lindsay Crouse:
Social media in 2020 is so ingrained that it’s no longer a supplement or even an addiction. It’s just an accelerated extension of the way humans have always behaved. We live in a culture of constant updates. You want to unsubscribe? Well, you can’t.
Facing Anger from Journalists, Assemblywoman Gonzalez Offers AB 5 Changes
Good news for freelance journalists, but not other independent contractors.
Do you watch scripted TV and movies, such as dramas and comedies, on a tablet, phone, or strictly on the TV? Do you watch a few minutes at a time, or a whole episode or episodes at once?
Sarah Miller: The Diet Industrial Complex Got Me, and It Will Never Let Me Go “I did not see the body positivity movement coming, not at all.”
I just spent 15 minutes shopping for dental floss on Amazon. Sometimes choice is not a good thing.
Copied is a heck of a fine application for saving and managing multiple clipboards, particularly on the iPhone and iPad.
My favorite feature is the way it uses an external keyboard to let you do text transformations while keeping another app open – multitasking even on the iPhone.
I’m looking into Copied as a TextExpander replacement. Just save snippets to a list in Copied, and search for them as needed. By adding titles to the snippets, you can search for text that does not appear in the snippet itself. For example, title the snippet “address” and search for that word, and copied will find that snippet, even though your address doesn’t contain the text “address.”
Copied hasn’t been updated for a year, and hasn’t seen a major update in much longer than that. I expect any day now we’ll get an iOS update that breaks it, and there won’t be an update, and that’s that. That will be a sad day.
Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s slave and companion for many years, with whom he fathered multiple children, whose descendants are alive today. She won many concessions from him, including a comfortable life and freedom for her children.
Some historians, including some of Hemings' descendants, frame their relationship as a love affair. Others point out that Hemings really didn’t have a choice in the matter, which makes the relationship look a rape victim who has managed to negotiate an arrangement with her rapist. And that’s not even thinking about the big age difference between the two; Jefferson was a grown man when their relationship started, while Hemings was only 14-16 years old.
And yet to simply paint Hemings as a victim does not take into account that she negotiated a pretty good deal for herself within the constraints of slavery. She was relatively powerless, while Jefferson was one of the most powerful people in the new United States, and yet she got a good treatment for herself and her children, which is an extraordinary accomplishment.
And maybe they did love each other. We don’t know.
Also, remembering Ernest Hemingway biographer and friend A. E. Hotchner, who died Feb. 15, age 102. Hotchner spoke with Terry Gross in 1999.
Forget passwords: Secure yourself with a passphrase and these tools - Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
