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Technology
Although we&ve been promised no &C& or &D& week second cumulative updates for the rest of the year —at least for Windows— Microsoft has acknowledged a bug it created in last weekPatch Tuesday Office patches, and now promises that it&ll update the bad fixes on most machines this week or next. Those are "C" week and "D" week, respectively.
The cause du jour: a bug in all of this monthOffice security patches that throws an error in Access saying, &Query xxxx is corrupt,& when in fact the query in question is just fine. Microsoft describes the erroneous error message on its Office Support site:
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This pilot fish doesn&t have a traditional tech background. He was the photographer for his university department, and when the World Wide Web came along he volunteered to run the departmentin-house web server. A few years after that, they&re running Filemaker databases online, and theresome glitch that causes Filemaker to freeze.
Fishresearch leads him to think that a little knowledge of Unix would be helpful. So he heads to a discount bookstore, where he asks the guy behind the counter, &Do you have anything on Unix?& The clerk promptly replies, &I don&t think so, but try the social science section.&
Fish starts off in the direction the finger is pointing, pondering why books on Unix books would be categorized as socialscience. And stops after just a few steps when it hits him: eunuchs, not Unix.
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The Canadian division of Walmart has launched a blockchain-based supply chain that includes freight tracking and payment processing for 70 trucking companies whose goods are transported to more than 400 retail stores.
The system is now live and all of Walmart Canada's third-party freight carriers are scheduled to be on the network by Feb. 1, 2020, the company said in a statement. Walmart claims the blockchain network is the largest of its kind in the world, a claim not disputed by industry analysts.
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Human rights charity Amnesty International is the latest to call for reform of surveillance capitalism — blasting the business models of &surveillance giants& Facebook and Google in a new report which warns the pairmarket dominating platforms are &enabling human rights harm at a population scale&.
&[D]espite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebookplatforms come at a systemic cost,& Amnesty warns. &The companies& surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse. Firstly, an assault on the right to privacy on an unprecedented scale, and then a series of knock-on effects that pose a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion, to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination.&
&This isn&t the internet people signed up for,& it adds.
Whatmost striking about the report is the familiarly of the arguments. There is now a huge weight of consensus criticism around surveillance-based decision-making — from Appleown Tim Cook through scholars such as Shoshana Zuboff and Zeynep Tufekci to the United Nations — thatitself been fed by a steady stream of reportage of the individual and societal harms flowing from platforms& pervasive and consentless capturing and hijacking of peopleinformation for ad-based manipulation and profit.
This core power asymmetry is maintained and topped off by self-serving policy positions which at best fiddle around the edges of an inherently anti-humanitarian system. While platforms have become practiced in dark arts PR — offering, at best, a pantomime ear to the latest data-enabled outrage thatmaking headlines, without ever actually changing the underlying system. That surveillance capitalismabusive modus operandi is now inspiring governments to follow suit — aping the approach by developing their own data-driven control systems to straitjacket citizens — is exceptionally chilling.
But while the arguments against digital surveillance are now very familiar whatstill sorely lacking is an effective regulatory response to force reform of what is at base a moral failure — and one thatbeen allowed to scale so big itattacking the democratic underpinnings of Western society.
&Google and Facebook have established policies and processes to address their impacts on privacy and freedom of expression & but evidently, given that their surveillance-based business model undermines the very essence of the right to privacy and poses a serious risk to a range of other rights, the companies are not taking a holistic approach, nor are they questioning whether their current business models themselves can be compliant with their responsibility to respect human rights,& Amnesty writes.
&The abuse of privacy that is core to Facebook and Googlesurveillance-based business model is starkly demonstrated by the companies& long history of privacy scandals. Despite the companies& assurances over their commitment to privacy, it is difficult not to see these numerous privacy infringements as part of the normal functioning of their business, rather than aberrations.&
Needless to say Facebook and Google do not agree with Amnestyassessment. But, well, they would say that wouldn&t they?
Amnestyreport notes there is now a whole surveillance industry feeding this beast — from adtech players to data brokers — while pointing out that the dominance of Facebook and Google, aka the adtech duopoly, over &the primary channels that most of the world relies on to engage with the internet& is itself another harm, as it lends the pair of surveillance giants &unparalleled power over peoplelives online&.
&The power of Google and Facebook over the core platforms of the internet poses unique risks for human rights,& it warns. &For most people it is simply not feasible to use the internet while avoiding all Google and Facebook services. The dominant internet platforms are no longer ‘optional& in many societies, and using them is a necessary part of participating in modern life.&
Amnesty concludes that it is &now evident that the era of self-regulation in the tech sector is coming to an end& — saying further state-based regulation will be necessary. Its call there is for legislators to follow a human rights-based approach to rein in surveillance giants.
You can read the report in full here (PDF).
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When you think about artificial intelligence, chances are you think about anthropomorphic robots that can make decisions on their own. But artificial intelligence already has huge impacts in the insurance space. Thatwhy I&m excited to announce that omni:us founder and CEO Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.
omni:us is an AI-driven service that can process a ton of documents (including documents with handwriting), classify them and extract relevant data. This way, omni:us customers can use the platform for automated claims handling.
The startup doesn&t want to disrupt existing insurance companies. Instead, it is working with some of the biggest insurance companies out there, such as Allianz, Baloise, AmTrust and Wefox.
Last year, omni:us raised a $22.5 million Series A funding round (€19.7 million) led by Berlin-headquartered VC firm Target Global, followed by MMC Ventures and Talis Capital. Existing investors Unbound and Anthemis, also participated. Up next, omni:us wants to expand to the U.S.
omni:us is well aware that relying more heavily on artificial intelligence can create some issues. Many AI-driven platform act as a sort of black box —you input data and get a result without really knowing why. omni:us says front and center that it wants to make fast, transparent and empathetic claims decisions.
Buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion and many others. The conference will take place on December 11-12.
In addition to panels and fireside chats, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield to compete for the highly coveted Battlefield Cup.
Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss is an experienced managing director with a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Her strategic skills coupled with a passion for AI led her to create omni:us with the goal of redefining the way people work and how companies are handling their business operations. omni:us is as an MI-based, SaaS solution to massively optimize workflows, and empower businesses to make comprehensive data-driven decisions.
Prior to omni:us, Sofie founded Qidenus Technologies which quickly became the leader in the market of robotics and digitization. Sofie is also the patent owner of the Vshape scanner Technology and winner of several awards including the Woman Technology. omni:us is an Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS) provider for cognitive claims management. Built on a fully data-driven approach, omni:us is transforming the way insurers interact with their insured parties. It provides all the necessary tools and information to make fast, transparent and empathetic claims decisions, whilst improving operational efficiency and reducing loss adjustment expenses. The company is headquartered in Berlin, with research partners in Barcelona and representations in the UK, France and the United States. For further information visit omnius.com.
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Read more: Omnius CEO Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss is joining us at Disrupt Berlin
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