The Download: China’s counterfeit lawsuits, and Apple’s accessibility failure
Plus: an OceanGate whistleblower raised considerations about its submersible years ago
Here is lately’s edition of The Salvage, our weekday e-newsletter that affords a each day dose of what’s going down on in the realm of technology.
The fraudulent complaints that scoop up hundreds of Chinese language Amazon sellers accurate away
Solar Qunming had no knowing that the note “airbag” might perhaps maybe well very effectively be trademarked. Solar, who owns an e-commerce company in Shenzhen, China, has been selling cellular phone conditions to Amazon buyers in Europe and the US since 2016.
When she listed a case with air-filled bumper cushions on the perimeters to guard the cellular phone on Amazon in November 2021, she didn’t know that the note “airbag” in the context of electronic machine accessories had been trademarked by another cellular phone case supplier, PopSockets.
A few months later, the company sued Solar and more than 160 other online sellers for trademark infringement. Her accounts had been restricted and her myth balances had been frozen.
Solar is some distance from on my own. Her case is traditional of a novel make of lawsuit suing hundreds of sellers on Amazon or other platforms on the identical time for selling fraudulent items—and in addition they’re getting an increasing number of baseless. Read the overall epic.
—Zeyi Yang
If you’d desire to read more about the sinister-border e-commerce industry in China, Zeyi has dug extra into it in the most modern edition of China Record, his weekly e-newsletter keeping the tech industry in China. Test in to receive it for your inbox every Tuesday.
The iPad used to be supposed to revolutionize accessibility. What came about?
On April 3, 2010, Steve Jobs debuted the iPad. What for most of us used to be basically a more convenient make factor used to be something mighty more consequential for non-audio system: a life-altering revolution in earn entry to to a portable, worthy dialog machine for factual a pair of hundred dollars.
But a bit of hardware, on the change hand impressively designed and engineered, is biggest as treasured as what an person can attain with it. After the iPad’s free up, the flood of unusual, easy-to-exercise augmentative and change dialog apps that users had been in determined want of never came.
This day, there are biggest round half of a dozen apps, every retailing for $200 to $300, that ask users to make a possibility from menus of crudely drawn icons to assemble text and synthesized speech. It’s a depressingly slack slither of pattern for such a well-known human characteristic. Read the overall epic.
—Julie Kim
This epic is from our impending print wretchedness, which is all about accessibility. If you haven’t already, subscribe to plot distinct you don’t fail to heed future reports—subscriptions commence from factual $80 a year.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the earn to search out you lately’s most relaxing/fundamental/provoking/provocative reports about technology.
1 OceanGate used to be responsive to safety considerations over its submersible
He claimed the sub, which is for the time being lacking, had “visible flaws” and used to be no longer constructed for vulgar depths. (Current Republic $)
+ The corporate likened itself to the SpaceX of the sea. (Motherboard)
+ There will continuously be of us prepared to pay for vulgar tourism ventures. (The Atlantic $)
+ Coastguards are scouring the sea for any signal of the vessel. (Economist $)
2 Building AI is seriously laborious work
Hundreds and thousands of of us are paid a pittance to plot AI seem human. (NY Mag $)
+ AI must face as much as its invisible-worker wretchedness. (MIT Technology Assessment)
+ OpenAI is pondering making an app store for AI application. (The Recordsdata $)+ Joe Biden has met with AI critics. (WP $)
3 Reddit suspended some protesting moderators and reinstated others
The war of attrition between Reddit and its volunteers reveals no signal of slowing. (The Verge)+ The corporate’s additionally below stress from a disgruntled hacking neighborhood. (Vox)
4 Inner the legal world of violent Discord servers
Groups of younger men fragment pointers and boast about their purported crimes. (Motherboard)
5 How faraway working grew to alter into commence-ups’ secret weapon
Huge Tech needs its workers relief in areas of work—nonetheless workers aren’t biting. (Vox)
+ Some companies are even offering charitable donations in alternate for attendance. (NYT $)
6 US states are rushing to preserve a watch on deepfakes
It’s a accurate house with a gorgeous rate of progress. (Bloomberg $)
+ Deepfake porn is ruining females’s lives. (MIT Technology Assessment)
7 Ask is rising for a controversial novel ALS drug
Relyvrio might perhaps maybe well perhaps slack the illness’s development, nonetheless its effects are unproven. (Current Yorker $)
+ The US is clamping down on unchecked lab checks. (Undark)
8 Tesla’s supercharger network is expanding
Householders of Rivian vehicles can now earn spirited. (WSJ $)
+ In the conflict of the EV chargers, it’s Tesla vs. all americans else. (MIT Technology Assessment)
9 Meet China’s ChatGPT hustlers
They’re grifting away, even supposing it’s technically banned there. (Wired $)
+ Other folks are already using ChatGPT to bear exercise plans. (MIT Technology Assessment)
10 Digital avatars are presenting the news in Indonesia
And they’re crafted to completely symbolize particular demographics. (Relaxation of World)
Quote of the day
“He’s an explorer to the core of his soul.”
—Fellow adventurer Jannicke Mikkelsen describes her friend Hamish Harding, the British businessman for the time being lacking onboard the Titan submersible, to CNN.
The astronomical epic
How technology helped archaeologists dig deeper
April 2021
Construction workers in Current York’s Decrease Lengthy island neighborhood had been breaking ground for a novel federal building relief in 1991 when they unearthed hundreds of coffins. The sphere, is assumed as the African Burial Ground, grew to alter into one of the most largest-known archaeological discoveries in the nation and is now a national monument.
The African Burial Ground mission used to be amongst the first to make exercise of a novel constellation of “bioarchaeology” tools that went formulation beyond the mature pickaxes and brushes. But this used to be merely the first stage of a mighty wider archaeological revolution that introduced scientists and humanities students together to generate details about our ancestors. Read the overall epic.
—Annalee Newitz
We can mute possess good issues
A site for comfort, relaxing and distraction in these unfamiliar conditions. (Received any solutions? Tumble me a line or tweet ’em at me.)+ Presumably the excellent in controversial lists: rating Disney motion photographs by their faithfulness to their guide source cloth.
+ Cosy summer solstice to of us that possess a well-known time, alongside side the Sinagua of us.
+ In reward of spending time pottering for your garden.
+ Aww, Slipknot’s viewers knows no age boundaries.
+ Coney Island’s mermaid parade appears adore a total lotta relaxing.
