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Facebook Tweaked Its News Feed, Saw 'Unhealthy Side Effects'

Internal docs show 2018 changes to enhance user engagement made things angrier, more polarizing

(Newser) - Facebook execs likely aren't looking forward to the latest copies of the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this week, the paper published a damning story about Instagram on the platform's harmful effects on teen users (and how the parent company knew about it), as well as an article on...

Investigation Uncovers Serious Flaws With ShotSpotter Evidence

Chicago man spent nearly a year in jail based on algorithm

(Newser) - Michael Williams was arrested last August, accused of murdering a young man from his Chicago neighborhood who asked the 65-year-old for a ride during a night of unrest in May over police brutality. The key evidence came from video of a car driving through an intersection, and a loud bang...

His Profane Tweets About the Apple Card Went Viral
His Profane Tweets About
the Apple Card Went Viral
the rundown
Nov 11, 2019 12:10 PM CST

His Profane Tweets About the Apple Card Went Viral

And are leading to a probe of Goldman Sachs' credit card practices

(Newser) - David Heinemeier Hansson says his wife has the superior credit score. They file their taxes jointly. And while the tech entrepreneur didn't provide any other personal financial information, he did disclose an alleged financial injustice on Thursday. In a series of tweets that have continued through Monday, the Ruby...

The Secretive Gambling 'Nerd' Whose Algorithm Won $1B

So says Kit Chellel in his fascinating piece on horse-racing wiz Bill Benter

(Newser) - Nearly 15% of the people in Hong Kong placed wagers on a huge horse-racing competition on Nov. 6, 2001—but it was American Bill Benter, who'd put in more than 51,000 bets with an associate, who won the Triple Trio by predicting the top three horses in three...

This Is the Longest Line You Can Sail Without Hitting Land

It goes more than 19K miles, from Pakistan to Russia

(Newser) - Feel like getting away on the open sea for a long while? Get yourself a boat and head to Pakistan's coastal town of Sonmiani. From there, you can embark on the longest sailable straight line possible, reaching Russia's Karaginsky District some 19,940 miles away, according to researchers....

Google Won't Suggest 'Are Jews Evil' to Your Search Anymore

Search engine is working to remove offensive autocomplete results

(Newser) - Google will no longer offer a search suggestion for "are Jews evil" which directs users to anti-Semitic websites. The search engine says it has removed offensive autocomplete results initially spotted by Carole Cadwalladr at the Observer , reports the Guardian . Cadwalladr explained how Google suggested a search for "are...

Amazon's Algorithm May Be Costing You Money
Amazon's Algorithm May Be
Costing You Money
in case you missed it
Sep 24, 2016 11:08 AM CDT

Amazon's Algorithm May Be Costing You Money

ProPublica says its own products often get preferred rankings

(Newser) - ProPublica has a warning for Amazon shoppers, i.e. pretty much everyone who shops: The results that come up first after a search are often not the best deals. Amazon gives preference to its own products or to companies who pay for its services when it comes to picking...

Robots Judge Beauty Contest, Get Called Racist

Artificial intelligence was supposed to eliminate bias—but most winners were light-skinned

(Newser) - Can robots be racist? It appears that way, per results from Beauty.AI , a beauty competition designed to take prejudices out of the mix by having algorithms do the judging instead of humans. But results from the competition indicate that even 'bots have biases, the Guardian reports. Forty-four winners...

Algorithm Can Spot If You're Tweeting While Drinking

It even knows if you're drinking at home

(Newser) - Think last night's drunk tweets were pretty coherent? You won't fool University of Rochester researchers, who have developed a machine-learning algorithm that can tell when a tweeter is drinking. To do so, they started with humans: Researchers collected tweets associated with alcohol—think ones with words like "...

How to ID a Terrorist: V Signs?
 How to ID a Terrorist: V Signs? 
NEW STUDY
Mar 10, 2016 12:34 PM CST

How to ID a Terrorist: V Signs?

Scientists say everyone's hand geometry is different and may help ID terrorists

(Newser) - Trying to ID masked terrorists appearing in propaganda or execution videos is one of counterterrorism's biggest obstacles. But a researcher at Jordan's Mutah University and his team think they've found one physical tell that could prove invaluable: the victory sign formed by making the letter "V"...

Meet the Man Who's Authored 100K Books

Though, technically, they were compiled by a computer

(Newser) - Reading 100,000 books in a lifetime sounds impossible. Authoring that many sounds unthinkable, but that's exactly what Philip M. Parker can proclaim he has done. The professor at business school INSEAD calls himself "the most published author in the history of the planet" and claims 200,000...

Freakonomics Author Busts Cheating Kids via Algorithm

Four of the 12 that his algorithm deemed highly suspicious have confessed

(Newser) - When a professor at an anonymous "top American university" recently suspected cheating in a class, no student would admit to it, so he called in a big gun: Freakonomics author and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. Levitt and Ming-Jen Lin, of National Taiwan University, devised an algorithm to...

Google Sorry for Labeling Blacks as 'Gorillas'

Was caused by algorithm error on the Google Photos app

(Newser) - The automated photo-tagging on the Google Photos app introduced in May isn't perfect, Google admits. Sometimes it gives a photo a wrong or irrelevant tag—and, on at least one occasion, an extremely offensive one. The company had some groveling to do after the app labeled a photo of...

Algorithm Will Tell All UPS Trucks Where to Go

Orion platform designed to optimize deliveries with best, most consistent routes

(Newser) - A UPS driver has, on average, 120 stops to make each day. But what's the most efficient route that driver can take? The company is hoping its Orion computer platform will solve this issue for its 55,000 US routes using an algorithm that examines travel costs, distance, and...

Math Model May Reduce Military Suicides

One notable factor: Older enlistees seem to be at higher risk

(Newser) - The US military's quest to curb its rising rate of suicides may get some help from a sophisticated new computer program, reports LiveScience . In a new study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers explain how they crunched data from 53,000 Army soldiers who were hospitalized between 2004 and...

Analysis: Sinatra Is Planet's Most Important Person...
Analysis: Sinatra Is Planet's Most Important Person...
in case you missed it
Jun 15, 2014 7:00 PM CDT

Analysis: Sinatra Is Planet's Most Important Person...

...at least according to Wikipedia ... and its English version

(Newser) - Using methods borrowed from Google, a group of researchers has analyzed all Wikipedia pages and determined that, at least on the English language version of the site, Frank Sinatra is the world's most important person. Second place goes to Michael Jackson, and third to Pope Pius XII. When factoring...

Google Searches Tie Bettina Wulff to Prostitution

Now the former German first lady is suing

(Newser) - Is it a political dirty trick, or did the "search algorithms" do it? The wife of Germany's former president is suing Google because Internet searches link her name to prostitution, reports the BBC . Google executives are blaming the company's automatic search algorithms for words like "prostitute,...

Algorithm Arranges Names on 9/11 Memorial

Order reflects 2,983 personal and professional relationships

(Newser) - The 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero will be dedicated this weekend, and Scientific American explains how planners used a complex algorithm to figure out how to arrange the 2,983 names of victims. They're not alphabetical but instead grouped by sets and subsets of personal and professional relationships. For...

Cops Using Math to Predict Crime

Algorithm anticipates where and when a crime might occur

(Newser) - Didn't anyone pay attention to how things went for Tom Cruise in Minority Report? Cops in Santa Cruz, California, are using a computer math algorithm to anticipate when and where crimes are most likely to be committed, reports ABC News . Based on earthquake prediction technology, the system uses years...

Algorithms Misfire: Amazon Lists Book for $24M

Computer-controlled pricing goes a wee bit out of control

(Newser) - Had you scooped up a copy of The Making of a Fly on Amazon last week, you would have made author Peter A. Lawrence a very happy—and rich—man. It listed for nearly $24 million, thanks to a robot pricing war gone wrong, reports CNN . Blogger Michael Eisen first...

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