av Mikael Winterkvist | sep 1, 2019 | Lästips
The Cost of Next-Day Delivery: How Amazon Escapes The Blame For Its Deadly Last Mile
Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery System Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame
Deaths and devastating injuries. A litany of labor violations. Drivers forced to urinate in their vans. Here is how Amazon’s gigantic, decentralized, next-day delivery network brought chaos, exploitation, and danger to communities across America.
Valdimar Gray was delivering packages for Amazon at the height of the pre-Christmas rush when his three-ton van barreled into an 84-year-old grandmother, crushing her diaphragm, shattering several ribs, and fracturing her skull.
“Oh my God!” screamed Gray as he leaped out of his van. It was a bright, clear afternoon on December 22, 2016, and the 29-year-old had been at the wheel of the white Nissan since early that morning, racing to drop Amazon packages on doorsteps throughout Chicago. He stood in anguish next to Telesfora Escamilla as she lay dying, her blood pooling on the pavement just three blocks from her home. After the police arrived, Gray submitted to drug and alcohol tests, whoch came up clean. He would later be charged with reckless homicide.
Källa: The Cost of Next-Day Delivery: How Amazon Escapes The Blame For Its Deadly Last Mile
av Mikael Winterkvist | aug 29, 2019 | Lästips
Jag kände exakt igen ljudet när ett US Robotics kopplade upp sig och jag hörde skillnad på vilken typ av uppkoppling det var och vilket protokoll som användes. Modemet lät olika beroende hur det kopplade upp sig och jag visste också när en uppkoppling inte lyckades.
The Guardian har skrivit en krönika om datorljuden spm nu är på väg att försvinna.
The first time I ever put a 5¼-inch disk into an Apple II drive to play Lode Runner, I was hooked. It seemed wildly futuristic – this was in the early 1980s – but there was also something pleasingly analogue about the process. You had to slide the disc from its sleeve like a vinyl record, then gently feed it into the mouth of the drive, before closing the little plastic door behind it with a satisfying click.
The loading noise was a stuttering series of electronic snare drum taps, accompanied by the baseline hum of the computer itself. There was something almost organic about it, like a CT scan or ultrasound. To me it seemed incredible that typing something on a screen could cause the disk to start loading, as though I was talking to the computer, and the clicking noise only accentuated this feeling of communication.
The Guardian
av Mikael Winterkvist | aug 22, 2019 | Lästips
Yesterday, President Donald Trump canceled a meeting with the new Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, because she refuses to discuss the sale of Greenland. Greenland used to be a Danish colony but now belongs to the people of Greenland—the Danish government could not sell the island even if it wanted to. Trump likely did not know that Denmark is one of America’s most reliable allies. Danish troops, for example, fought alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered 50 fatalities, and Danish forces were among the earliest to join the fight against the Islamic State.
Many Americans may laugh off Trump’s latest outrage, but Trump crossed an important line. It is one thing to float a cockamamie idea that no one believes is serious or will go anywhere. “Let’s buy Greenland!” Yes, very funny. A good distraction from the economy, the failure to deal with white supremacy, White House staff problems, or whatever is the news of the day. It is quite another to use leverage and impose costs on Denmark in pursuit of that goal—and make no mistake, canceling a presidential visit is using leverage and imposing costs.
Källa: Trump Has Defected
av Mikael Winterkvist | aug 19, 2019 | Lästips
Beats PowerBeats Pro review: Apple’s fitness AirPods rock
Bluetooth earbuds have long battery life, rock-solid connectivity and stay firmly planted on your ear.
The PowerBeats Pro are Apple-owned Beats’ first true wireless Bluetooth earbuds that cut the cable and seek to be the ultimate running and gym earphones.
As with Apple’s original AirPods, whoch looked like a set of the firm’s standard EarPods with the cables cut off, the £220 PowerBeats Pro are basically the firm’s popular PowerBeats 3 neckband Bluetooth earbuds without the cables joining the pair.
That includes the signature ear hook, whoch tucks behind the top of your ear to hold the earbuds in place. As such the PowerBeats Pro are neither small nor subtle. They come in black, but also a series of attractive colours such as a dark green. Still, if you were looking for a discreet set of earbuds you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Källa: Beats PowerBeats Pro review: Apple’s fitness AirPods rock
av Mikael Winterkvist | aug 19, 2019 | Lästips
What I Learned by Printing Thousands of Pages of My Facebook Data
In my attic lies a big box of scrapbooks and diaries chronicling my preteen through early college years, from the mid-1990s to early 2000s, in minute and sometimes cringe-inducing detail. The books are fat, their pages stuffed with doodles, notes passed in class, pictures clipped from magazines, and ticket stubs from multiple viewings of Titanic. But the box also speaks volumes with what’s not in it: namely, any books dated after 2004. That was the year Facebook launched, and my journaling habits tanked.
I joined as a sophomore in college, only a few months after Mark Zuckerberg hatched thefacebook.com in his Harvard dorm room. Back then, the site was accessible only to college students and felt tailored to that particular stage of our lives. It was a flirty, irreverent, and sparse online space where users could create personalized profiles, search for and “poke” each other, and not much else. As we grew into adulthood, so did Facebook. It opened its doors to anyone over the age of 13, rolled out a bevy of stimulating features like the News Feed, “reactions,” and livestreamed video, and embedded itself, uninvited, into the tasks and rhythms of our lives.
Källa: What I Learned by Printing Thousands of Pages of My Facebook Data
av Mikael Winterkvist | aug 11, 2019 | Lästips
Sweden was long seen as a progressive utopia. Then came waves of immigrants — and the forces of populism at home and abroad.
RINKEBY, Sweden — Johnny Castillo, a Peruvian-born neighborhood watchman in this district of Stockholm, still puzzles over the strange events that two years ago turned the central square of this predominantly immigrant community into a symbol of multiculturalism run amok.
First came a now-infamous comment by President Trump, suggesting that Sweden’s history of welcoming refugees was at the root of a violent attack in Rinkeby the previous evening, even though nothing had actually happened.
“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden!” Mr. Trump told supporters at a rally on Feb. 18, 2017. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
Källa: The Global Machine Behind the Rise of Far-Right Nationalism
