Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: January 28, 2020

In the Race for Cheap Airfare It’s You vs. the Machine

The New York Times – Travel providers now use software to re-price their offerings, sometimes dozens of times a day, putting travelers at a big disadvantage. “For business and leisure travelers, the result is a variation of the cat-and-mouse game, where travel companies are almost always the cat. Traditionally, hotels and airlines priced their offerings depending on peak demand periods, past sales data and the number of current reservations. Individual hotel properties could make changes if, for example, their hotel was emptier than usual for an upcoming date and a lower room price would spur demand. Now, changes in travel pricing are being made much more frequently. The practice, called “hyperdynamic pricing,” is poised for significant growth, said Angela Zutavern, a managing director at the technology consulting firm AlixPartners and the author of “The Mathematical Corporation: Where Machine Intelligence and Human Ingenuity Achieve the Impossible.” Hyperdynamic pricing factors in lots of data. Along with historical and seasonal information, the new A.I. systems scan the web for global news events, weather predictions, trending Google searches, social media posts, local event schedules and other factors that could affect demand, Ms. Zutavern said…”

Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers

EFF: “Ring isn’t just a product that allows users to surveil their neighbors. The company also uses it to surveil its customers. An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Four main analytics and… Continue Reading

Facebook privacy tool gives users more info on how they are tracked

USAToday: “It’s been way overdue. But Facebook has finally released a long-promised tool that could give you more control over how the social network traces your path across the web. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the global availability of this “Off-Facebook Activity” tool in a blog post Tuesday on Data Privacy Day. It’s part of an… Continue Reading

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News

The Atlantic – “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it,” Jonathan Swift once wrote. It was hyperbole three centuries ago. But it is a factual description of social media, according to an ambitious and first-of-its-kind study published in early 2018. The massive study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the… Continue Reading

The Germany Shock: The Largest Economy Nobody Understands

Conrad Bastable – How Germany Is Able To Run The World’s Second Largest Export Economy In The Post-Industrial Era – “The Germany Shock” describes European growth & the efficiency-maximizing centralization of European manufacturing activity after the launch of the Single Market and the Euro. Two questions sparked this: 1) why did Europe only adopt the… Continue Reading

It’s Not What Libraries Hold; It’s Who Libraries Serve

ITHAKA S+R – Seeking a User-Centered Future for Academic Libraries – “The mission of academic and research libraries is expanding, and our work is transforming. Collections alone are no longer sufficient to articulate our new value proposition and establish ROI to our institutions. Our academic and research libraries are doing more than just managing collection-centric… Continue Reading