Tag: technology

In September, Amazon confirmed that some of its marketplace sellers had bribed Amazon employees to delete negative reviews or to obtain proprietary information like sales data or customer e-mail addresses, following a report in The Wall Street Journal. Now, according to FT, Amazon has fired at least one employee.

FT says that the employee had provided customer e-mails to a seller. Amazon confirmed the news, saying that “individual responsible for this incident has been terminated from their position, and we are supporting law enforcement in their prosecution.” The affected customers have since been notified, and Amazon says that no other customer information was leaked to outside parties.

The WSJ’s report revealed that third-party…

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Is there a so-called “beauty mode” on the iPhone XS?

“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Even with the background hum of New York Comic Con all around us, the iconic voice of Hal 9000 — the sentient computer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey — made me intensely nervous as its red eye stares back from Master Replicas’ booth on the convention floor.

Steve Dymszo, CEO for the prop-making company, leans in to speak over the noise of the crowd. “What’s the problem?”

“I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do,” Hal responds. Dymszo gestures to the device. “You can go on and on with the rest of the sequence.”

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Announced earlier this year in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the iconic film’s…

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Go ahead and take a listen for yourself.

The polarization of the American electorate predated Facebook’s arrival on the scene. But a nagging question about the social network has been whether its viral mechanics — and the viral mechanics on YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms — have accelerated the split between the left and the right.

Today we have two stories that examine that phenomenon. The first concerns the fight over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. At a time when the sharing of news articles on Facebook is in general decline, the wrenching battle over Kavanaugh has been a top performer on the site. And many of the top performing posts, reports Craig Silverman, are among the most partisan in nature:

Daily Wire’s top story about Kavanaugh…

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Clinicians prescribed antibiotics without an infection-related diagnosis nearly half of the time and one in five prescriptions were provided without an in-person visit, according to new research.

Turbidity currents in submarine canyons often involve large-scale movement of the seafloor. This discovery could help ocean engineers avoid damage to pipelines, communications cables, and other seafloor structures.

More and more breweries are investing in practices to save energy and reduce greenhouse gases. Will it pay off? A new study suggests it may.

Chemists have found a way to select the outcome of chemical reaction by employing an elusive and long-sought factor known as the ‘impact parameter’ — the miss-distance by which a reagent molecule misses a target molecule, thereby altering the products of chemical reaction. Termed the ‘forbidden fruit of reaction dynamics’, the impact parameter has previously defied direct control.

In the world of catalytic reactions, polymers created through electropolymerization are attracting renewed attention. A group of researchers recently provided the first detailed characterization of the electrochemical properties of polyaniline and polyaspartic acid (PASP) thin films. The team used a wide range of tests to characterize the polymers, especially their capacity for catalyzing the oxidation of popularly used materials, hydroquinone and catechol.