Orlando, the City Beautiful and Strong
I am gay, half-Latin, and I live in Orlando, Florida. I have never been involved with any violent crimes and was thankfully not involved with the horrific murders that took place in my city on Sunday morning, but this is the closest anything that notorious has occurred to me.
It is the internet that is allowing so many varied viewpoints and reactions to enter my filter bubble, with the heartbreak and frustration that accompanies. It is also the communities that I am part of – both offline and online – that have shown amazing support all week. Facebook, Twitter, Email, Text, and Phone have all been used by friends to check in and ensure that I’m doing alright. The internet creates and maintains connections between us all. This is the reason that I love it. This is the reason that I will defend it as hard as I can.
I’m always going to think of all of those lives taken in my city. I’m also going to think of the outpouring of support that immediately followed, proving that love will always outdo hate.
What’s going on with Net Neutrality?
The ruling of the DC Circuit Court on the FCC’s proposed net neutrality was delivered earlier this week. Regulations proposed in 2010 and 2014 both failed, but the FCC seems to have learned its lesson, submitting a detailed document with the intent to counter every argument against their proposal. Their hard work appears to have paid off, as the court threw out every single one of the arguments.
The main point of contention revolves around the classification of broadband service. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 created definitions for telecommunications services and information services. Broadband was classified as a telecommunications service at first, switched to an information service in the early 2000’s, was challenged as far back as 2005, but has stayed that way until now.
Broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast have argued that since they bundle internet service with things like email accounts and hosting, which are unquestionably information services, the entire bundle including the telecommunications portion should be classified as information. A middling analogy of their argument is saying that since your bloody filet mignon has a side of carrots and beans (that you probably won’t eat anyway), the meal should be considered vegetarian.
You can see a more detailed breakdown of what this all means in a Vox story on the ruling.
I am sending pouting selfies to a robot. Its AI is well buff
Alistair Dabbs, The Register
Do you want to be judged on your looks by artificial intelligence? You’re in luck then! Beauty.ai is a website that aims to teach computers to recognize human beauty. You’ve still got time to upload selfies to be judged by the computers, or if you are a data scientist you can work on algorithms to do the judging. Finally, scientific validation of subjective beauty!
Omg opened my Nan's laptop and when she's googled something she's put 'please' and 'thank you'. I can't 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/hiy2tecBjU
— Ben ☾ (@eckyythump) June 9, 2016
Manners maketh Nan: Google praises 86-year-old for polite internet searches
Oliver Holmes, The Guardian
There’s not much of a story here beyond the straightforward: Ben posted a picture of his grandmother’s Google search in which she asked Google to please translate some roman numerals, thank you. The tweet took off in popularity which was only increased when the @GoogleUK and @Google accounts responded to the tweet.
While Google doesn’t have individuals answering all search queries, it’s cute to think about, and a reminder that good manners get you places.
Disturbing new site scrapes your private Facebook and informs landlords, employers
Chris Matyszczyk, CNet
Score Assured is a new company that scrapes social media accounts to calculate scores for landlords and job recruiters. Presumably, this is done through sentiment analysis, as well as an unknown algorithm that creates a profile of how good you would be as a potential tenant or employee.
While many states are passing legislation stopping employers from requiring that you hand over passwords (which is not even close to unheard of), the sneaky workaround of a plan like Score Assured is the opt-in status. Sure, you have to opt-in to a request to view your private Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. for the system to work, but what’s to say that a disqualifier for consideration is a refusal to do this?
Potential future employers: save time and let me know upfront if you ever want access to any of my accounts. I’ll save you time by pointing out that they are not currently private, and that I have no interest in working for your company.
Starbucks launches its Microsoft Outlook add-in for coffee fiends
Blair Hanley Frank, PC World
When Starbucks integrated with Twitter to allow users to send digital gift cards to one another over the service they made a ton of extra money. Now they’ve integrated with Outlook to offer the same feature, as well as a meeting feature that allows you to schedule in person meetings at the nearest Starbucks. Anyone care to get coffee with me?
This story was submitted by @lmelegari. Don’t forget that you can suggest stories for the newsletter!
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