Technology

Women of color running for Congress are attacked disproportionately on X, report finds

Published

4 hours ago

October 2, 2024

Women of color running for Congress are attacked disproportionately on X, report finds

Women of color running for Congress in 2024 have faced a disproportionate number of attacks on X compared with other candidates, according to a new report from the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the University of Pittsburgh.

The report sought to “compare the levels of offensive speech and hate speech that different groups of Congressional candidates are targeted with based on race and gender, with a particular emphasis on women of color.” To do this, the report’s authors analyzed 800,000 tweets that covered a three-month period between May 20 and August 23 of this year. That dataset represented all posts mentioning a candidate running for Congress with an account on X.

The report’s authors found that more than 20 percent of posts directed at Black and Asian women candidates “contained offensive language about the candidate.” It also found that Black women in particular were targeted with hate speech more often compared with other candidates.

“On average, less than 1% of all tweets that mentioned a candidate contained hate speech,” the report says. “However, we found that African-American women candidates were more likely than any other candidate to be subject to this type of post (4%).” That roughly lines up with X’s recent transparency report — the since Elon Musk took over the company — which said that rule-breaking content accounts for less than 1 percent of all posts on its platform.

Notably, the CDT’s report analyzed both hate speech — which ostensibly violates X’s policies — and “offensive speech,” which the report defined as “words or phrases that demean, threaten, insult, or ridicule a candidate.” While the latter category may not be against X’s rules, the report notes that the volume of suck attacks could still deter women of color from running for office. It recommends that X and other platforms take “specific measures” to counteract such effects.

“This should include clear policies that prohibit attacks against someone based on race or gender, greater transparency into how their systems address these types of attacks, better reporting tools and means for accountability, regular risk assessments with an emphasis on race and gender, and privacy preserving mechanisms for independent researchers to conduct studies using their data. The consequences of the status-quo where women of color candidates are targeted with significant attacks online at much higher rates than other candidates creates an immense barrier to creating a truly inclusive democracy.”

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REKOMENDASI RAK SERVER 2023, INDORACK PASTINYA #indorack #rakserver #rackserver

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5 mins ago

October 2, 2024

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REKOMENDASI RAK SERVER 2023, INDORACK PASTINYA #indorack #rakserver #rackserver

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Technology

Hedosophia leads $7M seed round into retail supply chain AI startup Ameba

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5 mins ago

October 2, 2024

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Hedosophia leads $7M seed round into retail supply chain AI startup Ameba

Traditional retailers have a pressing problem. Fast-moving like Shein and Temu are eating their lunch by leveraging purpose-built, end-to-end supply chains. Meanwhile, incumbent retailers are still stuck on legacy platforms, juggling a myriad number of data sets, and struggling to respond to a punishingly fast market.

A London-based startup thinks it has the solution to this problem. Ameba claims to be able to the unstructured data in a retailer’s supply chain systems, sprinkle in some generative AI, and make the whole thing more efficient.

The startup has now raised a $7.1 million seed round led by London-based VC firm Hedosophia, which has gained a reputation for rarely revealing which companies it invests in. TechCrunch reached out to the latter for further comment, but did not receive a response before publication.

Ameba’s platform uses generative AI on top of existing supply chain software to give retailers insights into their global supply chains, extracting data from a wide range of sources in order to predict disruptions and react to bottlenecks. The company claims it can reduce manual data input by 30%.

“In supply chains, particularly in the fashion consumer space, a lot of very important data is currently not being captured,” Ameba’s founder, Cedrik Hoffmann, told TechCrunch. “A lot of times, the things that are in the shops are sold at the wrong cost or they’re out of stock, or whatever.”

He said Ameba captures these unstructured data points that cost systems don’t: “We release that information from the information silos, bring them to a central source and surface the insights that are developed from them to the relevant parties within your organization.”

Co-founder Craig Massie said their underlying AI mixes a range of foundational models, including Open AI’s: “It changes depending on the task at hand and what performs best in our benchmarks for that task. The underlying constant across our AI usage is our multi-step agents — they can take actions, explore your ontology and its connections, read your supplier emails, WhatsApps and attachments.”

So far, British interior hardware and lighting company Plank has used Ameba to generate 140 alerts highlighting critical production and delivery delays that would have previously been missed or overlooked.

Before Ameba, Hoffman was the former supply chain director and co-founder of e-commerce company VALOREO, while Massie is a former Palantir engineer.

Also participating in the funding round were Visionaries Club, which previously led Ameba’s pre-seed round, and Anamcara Capital.

Isabella Yamamoto, principal at Visionaries Club, said in a statement, “After speaking to many supply chain owners, we were convinced that Cedrik and Craig had the experience to build a disruptive business using AI to eliminate fragmentation in supply chains and unlock competitive advantage for brands.”

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Technology

Microsoft Office 2024 is now available for Macs and PCs

Published

28 mins ago

October 2, 2024

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Microsoft Office 2024 is now available for Macs and PCs

Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office this week, designed for people that don’t want to subscribe to Microsoft 365. The standalone Microsoft Office 2024 release is now available for both consumers and small businesses, and includes locked-in-time versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook across both Mac and PC.

Office 2024 includes a lot of the updates that Microsoft has been delivering to Microsoft 365 subscribers over the past few years. Microsoft last released a standalone version of Office in 2021, and this new Office 2024 release includes improvements to the core apps, as well as accessibility and UI changes.

Office 2024 has a new default theme, with Microsoft’s latest Fluent Design principles that match the visual changes to Windows 11. Microsoft has also added accessibility-focused improvements to help Office users find potential accessibility issues in documents, slideshows, workbooks, and emails.

Excel 2024 can now reference Dynamic Arrays.

Image: Microsoft

The biggest changes in Office 2024 can be found in Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft has added new functions in Excel to use text and arrays in worksheets, alongside a new IMAGE function that can pull pictures from the web. Excel 2024 can also now reference Dynamic Arrays in charts, which can automatically update rather than being fixed to set data points. Microsoft claims the overall speed and stability of Excel 2024 should also be improved.

In PowerPoint Microsoft has added the cameo feature, allowing you to insert a live camera feed into slides. PowerPoint also has a new recording studio feature that includes recording features for narration, animations, transitions, and inking. You can also add closed captions or subtitles to videos and audio files in slides, making presentations a lot more accessible.

Outlook 2024 has improvements to search.

Image: Microsoft

Outlook 2024 includes improvements to search so you get more relevant results for messages, attachments, contacts, and calendar entries. This latest Outlook release also includes more options for meetings, including the ability to automatically shorten them. Mac users can also customize swipe left and right gestures in Outlook.

In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint you can now insert a picture easily from an Android mobile device, and Microsoft is also supporting version 1.4 of the OpenDocument format (ODF) which includes a variety of new improvements. Word and PowerPoint also include the ability to like and react to comments in documents.

Word 2024 has an improved file recovery feature.

Image: Microsoft

Word 2024 users will also be able to recover a session if your PC crashes. Word will automatically open all the documents you had open before your PC crashed, you lost power, or Word simply closed unexpectedly. OneNote 2024 users will also get access to the new inking and drawing experience.

Microsoft says Office 2024 will require a Microsoft account and an internet connection, but if it’s anything like Office 2021 then you’ll only need an internet connection to install the suite, activate it, and get any security updates. Office 2024 will run on Windows 10 and 11 as well as the three most recent releases of macOS.

Office 2024 will be available in two different editions. Office Home 2024, priced at $149.99, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for PC or Mac. If you want Outlook, you’ll need to purchase the $249.99 Office Home and Business 2024 version, which also includes the rights to use the apps for commercial purposes.

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Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 Blade Server Enclosure Forefront Technologies

Published

37 mins ago

October 2, 2024

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Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 Blade Server Enclosure Forefront Technologies

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Technology

Forget AI — most UK firms just want to hire basic IT skills

Published

48 mins ago

October 2, 2024

NewsAdmin

Despite ongoing interest surrounding artificial intelligence technologies embedded into work environments, UK businesses are still prioritizing hiring workers with basic technical skills.

New research by Indeed found only 2.6% of job postings in the UK mentioned AI skills, with basic skills like Microsoft Office and generic IT expertise coming up more frequently.

According to the report, the most common technical skills sought by UK employers include generic IT skills (10%), Microsoft Office (6%) and Microsoft Excel (5%). Moreover, demand for basic IT skills has remained pretty consistent over the past five years, both in the UK and in other markets like the US.

UK businesses need basic IT skills more than AI

Besides tech skills, Indeed found that UK employers are also prioritizing human skills like communication (30%), leadership (9%) and organization (7%).

Moreover, Indeed’s research into the current state of the UK jobs market tackles ongoing concern that AI could replace human workers. The analysis of over 2,800 work skills found that two-thirds (68.7%) are ‘very unlikely’ or ‘unlikely’ to be replaced by generative AI.

“While AI and other advanced technologies are likely to shape the future labour market, the current reality is that many employers are simply seeking workers with basic computer skills,” commented Indeed Senior Economist Jack Kennedy.

“While AI may eventually necessitate a broad upskilling across the workforce to embrace advanced technologies, there remains a more pressing concern around closing basic digital skills gaps and allowing everyone to fully engage with work in the digital age.”

This is despite Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer’s ambitions to make the UK a global AI hub.

Despite the Prime Minister’s efforts, the current jobs market suggests businesses are not yet aligned with the vision, with employers still seeking fundamental tech skills and human competencies.