Tuesday 14th May 2024

Airlines Sue to Block New Biden Fee Transparency Rule

U.S. airlines are suing to block the Biden administration from requiring greater transparency over fees that the carriers charge their passengers, saying that a new rule would confuse consumers by giving them too much information during the ticket-buying process.

The trade group, Airlines for America, said the Transportation Department is going beyond its authority by attempting "to regulate private business operations in a thriving marketplace." The airlines said the administration hasn't shown that consumers can't get information about fees already.


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The 2 Best Reasons to Buy the New M2 iPad Air

After spending a week with the new iPad Air with M2, I find myself confused. Honestly, it's kind of hard to review. On the one hand, if you compare it to the previous model, this one is mostly a spec bump. It now has an M2 processor instead of the M1, but it's the same form factor you're used to--you can just now get it in either an 11-inch or 13-inch size. 

To be fair, the M2 is a pretty great spec bump. It's more than enough processor for whatever someone might want to do with an iPad Air. It's just that the M2 is more than enough processor for whatever someone might want to do with an iPad Air, so why not just get the previous version?


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Why Employees Who Work Across Silos Get Burned Out

When employees collaborate across silos, there are numerous benefits for organizations. But the employees who do this critical work — also known as boundary spanners or network brokers — may end up overwhelmed, burned out, and can even develop abusive behavior toward their fellow employees. Research shows why this can happen, and suggests three key strategies companies can use to mitigate any negative effects: strategically integrating cross-silo collaboration into formal roles, providing adequate resources, and developing check-in mechanisms and opportunities to disengage.

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What Companies Get Wrong About Skills-Based Hiring

In recent years companies have removed college-degree requirements from many of their job postings. They’ve done this for good reason: Talent is scarce, and requiring degrees eliminates almost two-thirds of workers from consideration, a disproportionate number of them Black and Hispanic.  But there’s a problem: For every 100 of these new postings, fewer than four additional candidates without degrees are actually hired. The authors of this article argue that it’s time to do more to make skills-based hiring a reality, and they present six ways that companies and hiring managers can do so.

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4 Strategies to Guide Your Team Through a Departmental Transition

Whether initiated by strategic realignment, leadership changes, or market demands, departmental transitions test a leader’s mettle. In this article, the authors offer four strategies to guide your team through a departmental transition while maintaining morale, productivity, and cohesion: 1) Communicate the “why” clearly and authentically. 2) Acknowledge the emotional impact. 3) Cultivate ownership and involvement. 4) Prepare your team for future changes.

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Women are leading the charge for gig worker rights in Thailand

When a 19-year-old food delivery rider died in a road accident last year in Bangkok, Supaporn “Ja” Panprasit, another gig worker, demanded compensation from the Line Man app. She spent months following up with the police and even raised about $500 for the deceased worker’s family from the riders’ aid group she had founded.

Supaporn, 37, who herself was hit by a car last summer, then petitioned the Thai labor ministry for a government compensation fund for gig workers. While there was no regulatory change, Supaporn’s campaign was widely covered by local media.

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The $2.3 Billion Tornado Cash Case Is a Pivotal Moment for Crypto Privacy

In the fall of 2020, as crypto scammers and thieves began to realize the full potential of a financial privacy tool called Tornado Cash—a clever new system capable of shuffling users' funds to cut the trail of crypto transactions recorded on the Ethereum blockchain—Alexey Pertsev, one of the creators of that service, sent a note to his fellow cofounders about this growing issue. He suggested crafting a standard response to send to victims pleading with Tornado Cash for help with stolen funds laundered through their service. “We must compose a message that we will send to everyone in similar cases,” Pertsev, the then-27-year-old Russian living in the Netherlands, wrote to his colleagues.

Tornado Cash cofounder Roman Semenov answered three minutes later with a draft of their stock response—essentially pointing to the fact that the service's novel design meant it ran on the Ethereum blockchain, not on any server they owned, and was thus out of their hands. “It is a decentralized software protocol that no one entity or actor can control,” the message read. “For that reason, we are unable to assist with respect to any issues relating to the Tornado Cash protocol.”


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Internal Emails Reveal How a Controversial Gun-Detection AI System Found Its Way to NYC

In February 2022, a meeting was set up between New York City mayor Eric Adams’ team and an artificial intelligence gun-detection company called Evolv. An email thread from Evolv representatives included an accompanying brochure, which listed opportunities to partner together: in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, NYC schools, hospitals, and gathering places such as Times Square. One area conspicuously missing from the list, though, was the subway.

After an in-person meeting a few days later, Evolv cofounder Anil Chitkara made another attempt to sell the company’s technology—through name-dropping.


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OpenAI's GPT-4o Model Gives ChatGPT a Snappy, Flirty Upgrade

Since it launched in late 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has generally fended off suggestions that it has emotions or desires by responding that it’s just an artificial intelligence model. Upgrades announced by OpenAI Monday showed the company apparently trying to make the chatbot act more like a human.

In demos, the new version of ChatGPT was capable of rapid-fire, natural voice conversations, picked up on emotional cues, and displayed simulated emotional reactions of its own.


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The First Person to Receive a Pig Kidney Transplant Has Died

Richard “Rick” Slayman, the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died almost two months after the transplant. He was 62.

The historic procedure was carried out on March 16 at Massachusetts General Hospital. In a statement released on May 11, the hospital said it had “no indication” that Slayman’s death was the result of the pig kidney transplant.


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