Category: Uncategorised

Implicit biases are unconscious attitudes or stereotypes that affect how we perceive others; they sometimes run contrary to our conscious beliefs. Employers and law enforcement officers have faced criticism about implicit bias in the hiring of new employees and arresting of potential criminals. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the organization that publishes Science magazine, recently looked into the role of implicit biases in the scientific review processes.

The issue of implicit bias in the peer review process is significant because a strong publication record is critical to success in most science and engineering fields. Bias in the grant review process may determine which scientists are able to continue working in their field. If some groups of people are less likely to publish and get funding, then the professional sphere of science will remain more homogeneous.

This is problematic because diverse groups tend to be more creative and innovative. If the peer review process is preventing science from becoming as diverse, then innovation is likely being held back as well.

As we've noted before, Ars readers are extremely skeptical about the whole "connected car" thing. That's not because Ars is a technology site for luddites—the sad truth is that the car industry's approach to security lags far behind its desire to expose the inner thoughts of our cars to us via the cloud.

As the tech and auto industries collide, the tech crowd is hoping that its more farsighted approach to ensuring secure hardware and code will start to rub off on its new bedfellow. On Wednesday and Thursday this week, the two have come together in Michigan for TU-Automotive Detroit, a conference that's focusing in part on this very topic. And tech firms—from established players like Symantec to startups like Karamba Security—want to help the automakers find their way.

The glaring lack of connected security for our cars got mainstream attention last year when Fiat Chrysler had to recall 1.4 million vehicles, but despite the FBI's plea to motorists to remain aware of security issues in cars, the driving public doesn't seem too concerned. Earlier this week, research firm Forrester announced that more than one in three Americans wants their next car to have better Internet connectivity. Meanwhile, the hacks keep happening. Nissan's API for its Leaf electric vehicle allowed completely anonymous requests to cars. Mitsubishi might have decided to enable connected car services for its Outlander via the vehicle's Wi-Fi in part to safeguard against attacks in the cloud, but it forgot that Wi-Fi needs some common sense security protections, too.

Last August, Microsoft finally confirmed earlier rumors by announcing that the Xbox One would be usable as a digital video recorder sometime in 2016. Now, it seems Microsoft is giving up those plans.

"After careful consideration, we've decided to put development of DVR for over-the-air TV on hold to focus our attention on launching new, higher fan-requested gaming experiences across Xbox One and Windows 10," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge in a statement. "We're always listening to fan feedback and we look forward to bringing more requested experiences on Xbox One, Windows 10, and Xbox Live this year."

As originally announced, the feature would have been limited to over-the-air broadcasts received through the system's optional antenna USB dongle, and it wouldn't have worked with cable and/or satellite broadcasts taken through the built-in USB input. Users would have had to store shows on an external USB hard drive rather than the system's internal storage, and they would have been able to stream or download recordings to other mobile devices or Windows PCs.

If you're in the Bay Area tonight, June 15, join Ars editors Annalee Newitz and Cyrus Farivar for the filming of our third episode of Ars Technica Live, a monthly interview series with fascinating people who work at the intersection of tech, science, and culture. Our guest tonight at Oakland's legendary Longitude bar is journalist Sarah Jeong, who will discuss online harassment and what technologists can do about it. Doors are at 7pm and the discussion starts at 7:30.

Filmed before a live audience in Oakland tiki bar Longitude (located on 347 14th Street), each episode of Ars Technica Live is a speculative, informal conversation between your fine hosts Annalee Newitz and Cyrus Farivar and an invited guest. The audience—that would be you—is also invited to join the conversation and ask questions. These aren’t soundbyte setups; they are deep cuts from the frontiers of research and creativity.

This month's event is about online harassment, trolling, and cleaning up Internet garbage. Guest Sarah Jeong is a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale and the author of the book The Internet of Garbage. She writes for magazines and newspapers about the overlap between policy, tech, and the law.

After a hard day at the office, where you were focused intently on a challenging project, you may consider a choice on the way home: impulsively splurge on a fancy dinner as a reward for that cerebral slog or save that bit of cash as planned—perhaps putting it toward a relaxing vacation next month. Despite any frugal inclinations, your weary noggin may not be able to rally your normal level of willpower, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study involving 52 healthy adults, researchers found that six hours of challenging cognitive tasks fatigued a part of participants' brains involved in higher thinking and willpower—the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC)—and increased their impulsiveness. The finding suggests that real-life scenarios, such as having a mentally taxing day at work, may have critical but unappreciated impacts on people’s economic decisions. It also may point to the need for more brain-resting periods throughout a workday.

“The number and duration of work breaks could be adapted to avoid any dramatic LPFC dysfunction,” the authors of the paper conclude. And, they note, if employees have control over their own work breaks, they might instinctively avoid this brain drain, as researchers saw in a control group.

WWDC starts tomorrow, and Ars will be on the scene this week covering all the action (see our liveblog schedule here). Before the event begins, we're surfacing Andrew Cunningham's spin through the rumor mill so you know what to anticipate from Cupertino.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on Monday, and it all begins at 10am Pacific at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. While the bulk of the actual developer sessions will be happening at the nearby Moscone Center, Apple has moved the opening-day keynote to a larger venue to make room for more attendees.

Even given the iPhone announcements in the fall, WWDC is usually Apple's biggest event of the year, the one where we see the direction in which Apple's increasingly unified platform is moving for the next 12 months. We already know that we'll be getting our first looks at new versions of iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS, and the show is often good for a handful of product and service announcements as well as some more developer-focused stuff.

We're a few days out from the WWDC keynote, but Apple is already making some announcements. Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller was put in charge of the App Store back in December, and today he sat down with The Loop's Jim Dalrymple to detail his first major changes to the App Store.

The single biggest difference is a change to Apple's traditional 70-30 revenue split for in-app subscriptions. Under the new system, 70 percent of revenue will still go to the developer and 30 percent will still go to Apple, but after users have been subscribed for more than a year, the split changes to 85-15 in the developer's favor. This change will apply to all current subscription-based apps as well, so if you've already subscribed to Netflix or Spotify, those companies will start getting a larger share of the money soon.

The 70-30 split remains unchanged for other kinds of apps. For holdouts like Amazon that still don't offer subscriptions through their apps (or any apps at all for the Apple TV), the revenue tweaks may convince them to reconsider their positions.