AI Doesn''t Reduce Work–It Intensifies It (hbr.org) 02-09  ↑ 108 HN Points

It's JSON all the way down

attempting to detect smart glasses nearby and warn you - yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses

Reddit, Meta, and Google voluntarily “complied with some of the requests” for identifying details of users critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent as part of a recent wave of administrative subpoenas the Department of Homeland Security has been distributing to Big Tech the past few months, according to an anonymously sourced New York Times report. Those three companies, plus Discord, have received “hundreds” of such requests that have come from DHS recently. Meta, it should be noted, is the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Administrative subpoenas used for this purpose represent an escalation. This tool, which comes not from a judge but from DHS itself, was formerly reserved for situations like child abductions, according to the Times. The users were targeted because their posts “criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents,” the Times says. A Google spokesperson replied to the Times with a statement, saying “When we receive a subpoena, our review process is designed to protect user privacy while meeting our legal obligations,” and “We inform users when their accounts have been subpoenaed, unless under legal order not to or in an exceptional circumstance. We review every legal demand and push back against those that are overbroad.” Gizmodo requested comment from Meta, Discord, and Reddit. We will update if we hear back. According to the Times, one or multiple of the relevant companies have stated that they notify users of these requests from DHS, and give them a 14-day window to “fight the subpoena in court” before complying. Amazon has also been accused of at least some degree of participation with ICE’s ongoing mass deportation efforts. In October, Amazon-owned Ring announced a partnership with Flock that would loop the AI-powered network into the content coming from users’ doorbell cameras. According to a 404 Media investigation, that network feeds information to law enforcement agencies at the local and federal levels, allowing for reasonable concern that ICE has access to all that footage. Protesters have launched an effort called “Resist and Unsubscribe” targeting ten tech companies they perceive as exceptionally supportive of ICE. That list includes Meta, Google, and Amazon, but not Reddit.

Have you ever tried to start a book club at work? Did it lose steam around chapter 3 of the second book (if you even got that far)? Mine did. But how should we learn things from our co-workers? How should we keep in touch with what is going on in the industry? How can we apply ideas to our own company? Our blog post club format evolved as much as was designed, but has worked for us. Throughout the period between the meetings, people propose blog posts for discussion (a public slack channel works well but I could imagine a wiki page, shared public document, or anything which makes it easy to add items). At the meeting (once every two weeks for us), the facilitator asks everyone to vote on which blog post they'd like to discuss and puts the posts in order roughly from most votes to fewest. Someone presents the blog post (most often the person who posted it). The presentation is a summary of what is in the post plus discussion (roughly 5 to 15 minutes per blog post), and we typically get to about three to five blog posts per meeting. As with any discussion oriented meeting, facilitating it can be harder than it looks, but the focus on blog posts organizes the meeting. Agenda? Based on the posts we have and the votes. Digression onto a tangent? Often handled by saying "that's a great topic, why don't you find a blog post on that subject and post it in the channel for the next meeting". Disagreement between meeting participants? Sometimes can be handled by turning the focus to "the author of this post apparently would have said X". People didn't prepare for the meeting? We don't expect people to prepare and one thing that keeps this manageable is that the ideal blog post isn't too long to read/skim during the meeting itself. Have you tried this at work? How did it go? Any tips which might help other people start a blog post club at their job?