Cyborgs at work

What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand....
"The data that you could possibly get from a chip that is embedded in your body is a lot different from the data that you can get from a smartphone," he says. "Conceptually you could get data about your health, you could get data about your whereabouts, how often you're working, how long you're working, if you're taking toilet breaks and things like that."

Insurance for modern times

American International Group Inc (AIG.N) is joining insurers offering products that offer consumers safeguards against hackers and cyber criminals who might steal personal data.
The U.S. insurer plans to roll out a product on Monday that offers coverage for expenses that arise from online bullying, extortion and other digital misdeeds. Called "Family CyberEdge," it includes public relations and legal services, as well as at-home assessments of family electronic devices, executives said in an interview.

only hiring robots

Their working paper is available at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). This is the organization that is responsible for tracking US business cycles and calling “recessions.”
...
Specifically, they found that in a “commuting zone” with exposure to robots versus a “commuting zone” without exposure to robots:

Each additional robot reduces employment by a net of 6.2 workers.
Each additional robot per 1,000 workers reduces average wages by 0.73%.

Nationally – so beyond the commuting zone – effects were less massive as some jobs destroyed in Detroit might be replaced in other places:

One more robot per thousand workers reduces the US employment-to-population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points.
One more robot per thousand workers reduces US wages by 0.25% to 0.5%.

If the ratio of robots per 1,000 workers rises from 1 robot to 5 robots, wages would tumble by up to 2% nationally! In the same scenario within a “commuting zone,” wages would drop nearly 3%!
In 2014, there were 1.7 robots per 1,000 workers in the US, up from about 0.7 in 2000.

the future of renting?

Rentberry has been operating in test cities and angering affordable housing advocates since 2016. But with its new expansion into 1,000 cities in the United States, the rental bidding website is about to piss off a lot more people.
Alex Lubinksy, founder of Rentberry, seems to be pursuing an image that’s closer to Uber’s vilified Travis Kalanick than the do-gooder model of Elon Musk. Lubinsky courts the controversy that surrounds his startup and is known to include negative press when communicating his vision to reporters. But one big difference with Rentberry will be that if it takes off and becomes the new standard for renting apartments, most of its customers won’t be able to run a #deleteRentberry campaign because landlords will have the control.
The website essentially functions as a cross between CraigsList and eBay. A landlord lists a rental space and potential tenants bid against one another to claim the lease. Tenants’ personal information is available to the landlord. The landlord then makes their final decision by weighing what the best offer is along with which bidder seems like they’d be the best tenant. For now, Rentberry charges users a $25 fee, but in the future, it plans to charge 25 percent of the difference between the asking price and the agreed upon rent. Whoever received the better deal pays the fee—every month.

Trump welcomes in our dystopian future #1

The announcement hardly came as a surprise to police accountability activists, who warned from the outset that Sessions’ nomination could weaken police reform efforts. Another development, flying below the radar, could spell further trouble for efforts to reign in potential abuses by local police.
In January 2017, Congressman John Ratcliffe (R-TX) introduced a bill would make it easier for local police to get their hands on surplus military equipment. The bill now has 16 co-sponsors in the House and was referred last month to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations...
The “Protecting Lives Using Surplus Equipment (PLUS) Act” would essentially undo Obama’s 2015 executive order, which is deeply unpopular among law enforcement associations and police unions. Such groups have charged that the restrictions put police officers’ lives at risk—even though, as In These Times reported last year, the changes have done little to stem the overall flow of surplus gear to cops. The most recent figures, provided to In These Times by Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) spokesperson Susan Lowe, show that $544 million worth of excess DOD equipment was transferred to police departments in 2016. This actually represents an increase from the previous year’s total of $518 million. (Lowe stresses that these represent the original acquisition value of the property.)

Trump welcomes in our dystopian future #2

NBC News has a thorough report out on a tactic that hits close to home: CBP agents snatching Americans' cell phones at the border, demanding passwords, swiping information, and sharing copiously with other federal law enforcement agencies. Here's the nut:

Data provided by the Department of Homeland Security shows that searches of cellphones by border agents has exploded, growing fivefold in just one year, from fewer than 5,000 in 2015 to nearly 25,000 in 2016.

According to DHS officials, 2017 will be a blockbuster year. Five-thousand devices were searched in February alone, more than in all of 2015. […]

DHS has published more than two dozen reports detailing its extensive technological capability to forensically extract data from mobile devices, regardless of password protection on most Apple and Android phones. The reports document its proven ability to access deleted call logs, videos, photos, and emails to name a few, in addition to the Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram apps.

Some Americans are also getting their cell phones swiped while leaving the country, with a CBP spokesperson telling NBC that agents may be acting on concerns over industrial policy, whatever the hell that means. "CBP has adapted and adjusted to align with current threat information, which is based on intelligence," is how the spokesperson explained the sharp increase.

Americans are in agreement #1

President Donald Trump yesterday signed the repeal of online privacy rules that would have limited the ability of ISPs to share or sell customers' browsing history for advertising purposes, confirming action taken by the Senate and House. This was very much a partisan issue among elected officials. In a 50-48 vote, every Republican senator voted to kill privacy rules and every Democratic senator voted to preserve them. The House vote was 215-205, with 15 Republicans breaking ranks in order to support the privacy rules.
But ordinary Americans aren't split on the issue, according to a Huffington Post/YouGov survey that found 72 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of Democrats opposed the rollback.

Americans are in agreement #2

In the first official remarks by the group referring to President Donald Trump since he took office, spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said:
"America you have drowned and there is no savior, and you have become prey for the soldiers of the caliphate in every part of the earth, you are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye."

"... There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is," he said in a recording released on Tuesday on messaging network Telegram.