Clayton Christensen, the business scholar who coined the term “disruptive innovation,” died of cancer treatment complications on Thursday at age 67. The Verge reports: You may not immediately recognize his name, but the tech industry — and every resulting industry — is built on the framework of technology disruption and innovation that Christensen devised. The crux of Christensen’s theory is that…
Tag: airbnb
How the On-Demand Economy Reshaped Cities
Since 2010, a slew of on-demand companies and technologies have managed to use consumer data to transform the commercial significance of urban living. From a report: Historically, one of the great economic benefits of urban life is having access to jobs, schooling, goods, and services without needing to travel very far. But digital platforms that aggregate consumer demand are making physical…
Airbnb Tries New Screening System for ‘High-Risk Reservations’ After ‘Party House’ Fatalities
“The CEO of Airbnb has announced that the company will be banning ‘party houses’ and doubling down on getting rid ‘of abusive host and guest conduct’ in direct response to the deadly shooting that broke out during a Halloween party held at an Airbnb rental in Orinda, California,” reports BuzzFeed News: On Thursday, renters of the home in Orinda threw a…
Is Silicon Valley Building a Chinese-Style Social Credit System?
schwit1 shared this thought-provoking article from Fast Company:
Many Westerners are disturbed by what they read about China’s social credit system. But such systems, it turns out, are not unique to China. A parallel system is developing in the United States, in part as the result of Silicon Valley and technology-industry user policies, and in part by surveillance of social media activity…
AI Startup Boom Raises Questions of Exaggerated Tech Savvy
SoftBank-backed startup offers ‘human-assisted’ artificial-intelligence; current, former employees say company inflates its tech expertise. WSJ reports: Startup Engineer.ai says it uses artificial-intelligence technology to largely automate the development of mobile apps, but several current and former employees say the company exaggerates its AI capabilities to attract customers and investors. The competing claims reflect a growing challenge in the tech world of…
Bedbugs Are Giving Airbnb Users Headaches
Waking up with bedbug bites can be a nightmare. It’s also a costly and traumatic problem for Airbnb guests and hosts. CNET: CNET spoke to eight people who dealt with bedbugs in Airbnb rentals within the last three years. All of them said Airbnb, which was founded in 2008, doesn’t seem to have a systematic procedure in place for handling outbreaks….
Privacy Policies Are Essentially Impossible To Understand, Study Finds
The data market has become the engine of the internet, and privacy policies we agree to but don’t fully understand help fuel it. From a report: To see exactly how inscrutable they have become, I analyzed the length and readability of privacy policies from nearly 150 popular websites and apps. Facebook’s privacy policy, for example, takes around 18 minutes to read…
Will Car-Sharing Apps Revolutionize Transportation?
We’re now living in a wrold where customers “can download smartphone apps and rent privately owned cars, usually parked a short walk away in urban areas or residential neighborhoods,” reports the Orlando Sentinel, noting that the rates can be as cheap as $5 an hour — or $400 a day if you want to spend a day driving a Ferrari, Aston…
Microsoft Launches Decentralized Identity Tool on Bitcoin Blockchain
Microsoft is launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation by a major tech company that is built directly on the bitcoin blockchain. From a report: The open source project, called Ion, deals with the underlying mechanics of how networks talk to each other. For example, if you log onto Airbnb using Facebook, a protocol deals with the software that sends the personal…
Coursera Turns 7: Celebrate With Us!
Back in April 2012, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched Coursera to enable anyone, anywhere to transform their life through learning. Seven years ago, we couldn’t have imagined where we’d be today: connecting 40 million learners around the globe with the world’s greatest thinkers, educators, and institutions. A lot has happened since 2012. We admire […]
The post Coursera Turns 7: Celebrate…