Last month, venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan announced the Network School, a three-month learning retreat marketed to people interested in “network nations,” a kind of utopia for the anarchocapitalist set. The inaugural class is 150 people. It starts today. Details about the school have been shrouded in secrecy, even for the …
Read More »Protesters Take to Apple Stores Worldwide on iPhone 16 Launch Day
On Friday, customers around the world flocked to Apple Stores locations to buy the iPhone 16 on its launch day. But customers in over a dozen cities were met by protests organized by current and former Apple employees. The protesters—holding signs and banners saying that Apple is “profiting from genocide”—demanded …
Read More »Stadiums Are Embracing Face Recognition. Privacy Advocates Say They Should Stick to Sports
Thousands of people lined up outside Citi Field in Queens, New York, on Wednesday to watch the Mets face off with the Orioles. But outside the ticketing booth, a handful of protesters handed out flyers. They were there to protest a recent Major League Baseball program, one that’s increasingly common …
Read More »The Global CrowdStrike Outage Triggered a Surprise Return to Cash
On Friday, when a CrowdStrike update caused millions of Microsoft systems to crash around the world, many businesses were faced with a choice: Go cash-only or close until systems came back online. This quickly caused chaos in Australia, whose government has explicitly encouraged businesses to go cashless. Pictures posted on …
Read More »The Hidden Ties Between Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus and Israel's Military
On April 16, police entered Google offices in New York and California to detain several employees protesting a $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel’s government called Project Nimbus. The deal, shared with Amazon, has met pushback from some employees at both companies since 2021, but the protests have grown louder …
Read More »Amazon Ramps Up Security to Head Off Project Nimbus Protests
Amazon appeared to have significantly heightened security for its New York Amazon Web Services Summit on Wednesday, two weeks after a number of activists disrupted the Washington, DC, AWS Summit in protest against Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google’s $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The clampdown in …
Read More »Activists Disrupt Amazon Conference Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
A group of six activists disrupted the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington, DC, on Wednesday to protest Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google’s $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The protest, which interrupted the keynote speech from Dave Levy, AWS worldwide public sector vice president, is the …
Read More »STEM Students Refuse to Work at Google and Amazon Over Project Nimbus
More than 1,100 self-identified STEM students and young workers from more than 120 universities have signed a pledge to not take jobs or internships at Google or Amazon until the companies end their involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services and infrastructure to the Israeli …
Read More »The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’
AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers who do AI training work or online content moderation for companies like …
Read More »Google Fires 28 Workers for Protesting Cloud Deal With Israel
Google fired 28 employees Wednesday after they participated in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel’s government that also includes Amazon. Workers at both companies have claimed the deal makes advanced technology available to Israel’s security apparatus that could contribute to the killing and harming of …
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