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Earlier this month, Foursquare launched a special feature for users in Austin, Texas, called Hypertrending. The idea was to show off the company’s location tracking technology to attendees of the South by Southwest conference by creating a heat map of the city. The Hypertrending map ranked all of the public places in Austin based on how many people were in each location; during the conference, the Austin Convention Center was ranked first, with the local airport and the University of Texas second and third. You could also look at the most crowded restaurants, events, and nightlife–ostensibly to understand which places were happening and which weren’t. advertisement advertisement The experiment was only accessible in Austin and for the two weeks of the conference. And though it may have seemed innocuous to some, it also raised larger questions: Did Foursquare’s app really have enough users to create an accurate heat map? Was the company getting … [Read more...] about I tried to understand location tracking. It’s nearly impossible

The first time I met Ian Dick, the head of private housing at Newham council in east London, he took me on a walk to look for “beds in sheds”. It was 2011, and alongside criminal levels of overcrowding in private rental properties, there was a growing problem of people living in illegal structures in back gardens. It was not uncommon to find 10 or 20 people living in a room above a fried chicken shop, in a basement, or in ramshackle outbuildings. When we met again, five years later, he was happy to talk to me, not because these problems had disappeared, but because he was proud of the council’s private rented sector licensing regime. Introduced in 2013, it was the first such scheme in the country and had led to 800 prosecutions and 28 landlords being banned from renting property to tenants. This time we met in Forest Gate, traditionally one of the most deprived parts of Newham. “This is an area undergoing the most dramatic change – the council … [Read more...] about The great London property squeeze

NEW YORK—Although Microsoft has released a number of new Windows builds to members of its insider program since the August release of the Anniversary Update, so far these haven't contained much by way of substantial new features. The contents of the next major update to Windows 10 have remained largely unknown.Further ReadingLiveblog: Microsoft’s October Windows—and maybe even hardware—event That changed today. At its NYC event, Microsoft revealed some—though the company stresses, not all—of what we should expect to see when the update is released next year. And as with the Anniversary Update, the "Creator's Update" will focus on various key areas such as productivity and gaming. 3D features "3D" is a big deal in the Creator's Update, and Microsoft demonstrated the operating system's capability to quickly scan, modify, and print objects with 3D printers. The stated goal was to make "3D creation" as simple as the process is for taking a 2D … [Read more...] about Windows 10 “Creator’s Update” will be coming for free this spring

U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday that he hoped to have Justice Department investigations of the big tech platforms - Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc - completed next year. The four tech companies have been lightning rods for regulator probes this year. It was announced in July that the Department of Justice had opened a sweeping antitrust investigation of big technology companies to look at whether their online platforms have hurt competition, suppressed innovation or otherwise harmed consumers. The move came as a growing number of lawmakers called for stricter regulation or even breaking up of the big tech companies, which have come under intense scrutiny following a series of scandals that compromised users' privacy.  In addition to the Justice investigations, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general and Congress are looking at one or more of the companies. 'We started in earnest in July. It's been moving very … [Read more...] about U.S. attorney general says Big Tech probes into Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple should be completed next year

The center never held. Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images By now, Donald Trump was supposed to be selling herbal Viagra and 1,000-count packages of Trump Ice to reactionary survivalists over Facebook Live; Jeremy Corbyn was supposed to be resigning from the leadership of the (moribund) Labour Party to spend more time with his sewer grates; and Bernie Sanders was supposed to be ruing the fact that, in America, “democratic socialist” is a synonym for “politically irrelevant.” Alas, the pundits supposed wrong. The Republican Party nominated a xenophobic insult-comic — who had campaigned in support of political violence, religious discrimination, and mass-murdering Muslim prisoners of war with bullets dripped in pig blood — and was punished with full control of the federal government. The Labour Party fell into the hands of a radical leftist — who had called Tony Blair a war criminal and Hamas his “friends” — and was punished with … [Read more...] about Democrats Can Abandon the Center — Because the Center Doesn’t Exist

Wang Lin needed a change. The crushing air pollution and gridlock traffic in his hometown Hangu, an industrial district in China’s northern metropolis of Tianjin, made him anxious and sometimes sick. Then he heard about the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city. According to its marketing, the £24bn development – a joint venture between the governments of China and Singapore – will one day be a “model for sustainable development” only 40km from Tianjin’s city centre and 150km from central Beijing. To Wang, it sounded like paradise. Last year, the 36-year-old moved into an inexpensive flat in one of the city’s half-occupied apartment blocks. As a freelance translator, he doesn’t mind that most viable employers are at least half an hour away by car. He loves the relatively clean air and the personal space. But he also has his complaints. By the time the city is complete – probably by 2020 – it should accommodate 350,000 people … [Read more...] about China’s ‘eco-cities’: empty of hospitals, shopping centres and people