Sophie Kozub | The Verge

Meet the tech-savvy activists trying to take over the Democratic Party

2017-05-08T16:34:17-04:00

Image: The Young Turk Network

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, several alums of the Bernie Sanders campaign came together with media entrepreneurs from The Young Turks to chart their path forward. Disappointed with the performance of a Democratic Party they felt had chosen a too-centrist position, they decided to seek out and promote candidates from the left using some of the distributed organizing tools that had helped the Sanders campaign punch above its weight.

The group, called Justice Democrats, advocates for policy positions such as Medicare for all, regulating Wall Street, ending “the failed war on drugs,” and bringing about election reform, according to their platform. Meanwhile the group proposes electing individuals to replace “corporate Democrats,” and has criticized Cory Booker, Claire McCaskill, and other US senators on Twitter as #DemsVotingBadly.

These tools helped the Sanders campaign turn this “digital grassroots media” support into $33 million raised in three months alone

The Justice Democrats plan to organize in what executive director Saikat Chakrabarti calls a “distributed fashion.” As the director of Organizing Technology for the Sanders campaign, Chakrabarti worked alongside Justice Democrats co-founder Zach Exley and communications director Corbin Trent to create software to organize grassroots support. Among the platforms they pioneered was map.berniesanders.com, a tool which allowed volunteers to organize events, with planned events appearing on a map for other interested volunteers to locate. Volunteers organized nearly 60,000 campaign events using this software, according to Exley. The tech they developed also allowed for these teams of volunteers to organize without direct supervision from campaign staff, while being on call to assist in official field operations when needed.

These tools helped the Sanders campaign turn this “digital grassroots media” support into $33 million raised in three months alone. “Internet-based campaigns tend to fail to achieve their objectives when they can’t leverage the full capacity of all the people who raise their hands and say I want to be involved,” Exley told The Nation.

The Justice Democrats are partnering with Brand New Congress, a similar endeavor aimed at electing non-career politicians in both major parties by using grassroots support. Their policy goals include getting “money out of politics” and investing “trillions of dollars to rebuild and repair towns.” The group, which intends to be a consolidated resource and fundraising entity for all of its candidates, shares many of its members with Justice Democrats, including Chakrabarti, Exley, and Trent.

“I think that our ability to organize with technology and our ability to set up phone banks and distribute in an effective way is going to allow us to nationalize more effectively.”

While Justice Democrats is still developing their own versions of these strategies and has not had much of an opportunity to put them into play yet — they formed in January and just announced Cori Bush as their first candidate — Cenk Uygur, the CEO of The Young Turk Network and a Justice Democrats co-founder, has already started to use his platform to promote the group. His show alone has over 3 million subscribers, with The Young Turks Network drawing in 80 million unique views monthly and being the most-watched online network among 18–34 year olds, according to Esquire.

“Our goal is to nationalize those races and to really frame a narrative around these representatives that they aren’t just representing their district, which is a very big part of it, but they’re also representing the rest of America with their votes,” Trent said in an interview with The Verge. “So I think that our ability to organize with technology and our ability to set up phone banks and distribute in an effective way is going to allow us to nationalize more effectively. And then hopefully that’ll be something that supports the field operations on the ground of those candidates in those districts.”

On their website, Justice Democrats is soliciting nominations directly from supporters, and have so far received over 8,000 potential candidates. Many of these nominees, who may also be nominated by a team of Justice Democrats researchers, have little experience in the political process.

“They may be civil engineers, they may be activists, they may be nurses, they may be librarians or teachers or principals, but they don’t necessarily have the skills to run a winning campaign,” Trent said. Chakrabarti says they’re looking for people with a good “life record,” such as participating in various forms of activism, or just being well-liked community members.

The group had garnered 217,651 supporters and raised a little over $1 million by mid-March, just two months after they launched

In order to address the lack of political experience, they have established a vetting process that includes a candidate training program and interviews with the Justice Democrats leadership, according to Trent. At least 70 individuals have gone through the process. Among the nominees that the Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress have publicly endorsed are Ronjonette Harrison, a foster mom and social worker in New York’s 26th congressional district, and Chardo Richardson, ACLU president of Central Florida and an Air Force veteran.

So far, one candidate has officially taken up the cause of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats: Cori Bush, a teacher, nurse, civil rights organizer, and preacher who ran for US Senate in 2016, and is now running to represent Missouri’s 1st congressional district in the US House of Representatives. Justice Democrats initially tweeted their support for her on March 13th, and she was announced as a Justice Democrats / Brand New Congress joint candidate running as a Democrat on April 20th. They initially aimed to raise $10,000 by her launch rally on April 30th to get access to the voter file they need to contact voters, soliciting $3 and $7 donations in emails to supporters. By April 24th, however, they had already raised $20,000, and succeeded in getting the file.

But their goals of beating establishment Democrats and electing a new slate of candidates necessitated aggressive fundraising and organizing. The group had garnered 217,651 supporters and raised a little over $1 million by mid-March, just two months after they launched, but Chakrabarti says it costs about $1 million to run competitively in a congressional race.

“Right now, there’s one basic path to Congress for candidates, and that path goes through big donors and PACs and lobbyists and we’re trying to create an alternative path.”

“If Bernie can raise $232 million in a primary, we think if we can raise somewhere around a little bit more than that for primary season that we can be competitive,” says Trent.

The group is working on growing their slate of candidates in hopes of eventually running in over 300 races, further developing their platform, and growing their infrastructure of distributed teams and campaign staff, according to Trent. A large focus of their endeavors, however, will be fundraising.

“One of the biggest things that we’ve got to do is provide an alternative source of fundraising,” Trent said. “Right now, there’s one basic path to Congress for candidates, and that path goes through big donors and PACs and lobbyists and we’re trying to create an alternative path.”

The team’s next major project is launching the campaigns of eight more candidates with Brand New Congress, the identities of which they have not yet disclosed, other than that they are from states including New York, Florida, Arkansas, and West Virginia. They’re looking to raise $187,574 to buy voter files for the candidates, and they plan on accomplishing that goal by continuing to solicit small donations. They also plan to use their tech-based strategies to “run a presidential style campaign in these congressional races,” which Trent says allows them “to mobilize people from New York to California and everywhere in between to be impactful in campaigns they generally wouldn’t even be aware of, let alone be able to be involved in.”

“We saw this campaign that was grassroots fueled,” Chakrabarti said regarding the Sanders campaign when Justice Democrats first launched. “We’re going to do that same thing, but we’re going to take it forward to Congress.”

Twitter’s user growth continues to accelerate, but its revenues drop

2017-04-26T07:35:18-04:00

Twitter’s share price has been on a long, slow slide since the company went public back in November 2013. It’s currently trending around an all-time low of $14 a share, but the stock price was up more than 10 percent in premarket trading after the company reported strong user growth today.

Last quarter, Twitter’s daily active user base grew by 11 percent, but its revenue growth slowed to just 1 percent, well below the 48 percent growth rate it managed for the same period in 2016. Investors took this as a sign that advertisers are losing faith in Twitter — or migrating to more popular services like Instagram.

Users up, dollars down

This quarter was a repeat of that dynamic. The daily average user count was up 14 percent, but its revenue dropped to $548 million, a decline of 8 percent from the same period last year. The company still isn’t profitable, but it highlighted the fact that its losses shrunk by about 23 percent to just $62 million.

Twitter continues to be a central part of the news cycle around the world, although not at the fever pitch it was when President Trump was firing off political commentary at 3AM each morning. During 2016, none of the tweaks the company made seem to have generated new momentum. But over the last two quarters it’s become clear new users are finally flocking to the platform.

Twitter wants to be TV

The big question now is whether Twitter can find a way to reverse the slide in its revenue. It’s now competing against Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, all of which have larger daily user bases. In response, Twitter is moving its focus away from advertising in the timeline to broadcasting big live events. Over the last three months it pushed 800 hours of live video from big name partners like PBS, the PGA, Bloomberg, and the Halo World Championship. The live video feeds reached an audience of more than 45 million viewers, a 31 percent increase from the same period last year.

Soylent’s non-dairy powder recalled after dairy slips into the mix

2017-04-25T12:54:43-04:00

First we were worried about metal in our Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Then, it was golfballs in our hash browns. And now we might have to worry about dairy in our Soylent. The horror! Out of concerns that a small amount of whey powder slipped into a production lot of the company’s 1.8 Powder at a third-party facility, Soylent is voluntarily recalling 890 boxes that were shipped to 610 customers.

The accidental inclusion of dairy in the otherwise dairy-free product would have led to obvious problems for people who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk. Soylent and the US Food and Drug Administration said there have been no reports of serious illnesses yet.

The incident will not affect future shipments of the powder

The affected packages are those with the identifying info “Lot #: G7076PA, Expiration / Best Buy date: 02/2018.” The company is offering a full refund or replacement to those who have purchased the potentially cross-contaminated product, which can be requested at info@soylent.com.

The incident will not affect future shipments of the powder, according to a statement from the company, but it’s also only the latest chapter of unusual issues affecting Soylent’s products.

Back in October, the company stopped shipping both its Soylent Bar and its Soylent Powder because they were making people sick. Their other product, Coffiest, was also reported to have caused illnesses around the same time. Soylent blamed the Bar and Powder issues on TerraVia, its algal flour supplier, which shortly thereafter severed ties with the company. At the same time, however, TerraVia was also facing a class action complaint from its investors over failing to properly disclose that its products caused gastrointestinal distress, as reported by Ars Technica.

While Soylent is no longer using TerraVia’s algal flour and has rereleased its powders, it may be worth it to double check your packages of food replacement shakes to see if it might be among those that’s not actually dairy-free.

GoPro launches trade-up program to get customers to buy more cameras

2017-04-11T10:46:00-04:00

GoPro had a terrible 2016, losing $373 million and recalling its malfunctioning Karma drones. In a new attempt to get people to buy more of its cameras, the company has launched a trade-up program that allows GoPro owners to trade in their previous-generation Hero cameras for $100 off a Hero 5 Black or $50 off a Hero 5 Session.

If you want to replace the GoPro camera you’re not using, you can go to the company’s trade-up website. There, you can pick the camera you want and receive instructions on how to return your old device. Once GoPro gets your old Hero camera, they’ll send back a Hero 5 and recycle the old product.

The company laid off 270 employees in March

While the Hero 5 Black and the Hero 5 Session were the number one and two best-selling digital cameras in the US, according to an NPD report, the incentives of reduced cost and recycling show that GoPro may still be struggling to make enough money. In March, the company eliminated 270 employees in its third round of layoffs since the beginning of 2016.

The Hero 6 camera the company plans to launch later this year may boost sales, but the necessity to reduce $200 million in operating costs for 2017 that led to employee cuts reveals that GoPro is just not selling enough cameras.

Take a deep breath — no really, it will calm your brain

2017-03-30T14:00:01-04:00

When you’re stressed, people often advise you to take a deep breath — and for good reason, a new study shows. Slowing your breathing calms you, and now scientists may have figured out how you can relax your brain through your breath. It has to do with your brain’s pacemaker for breath.

For anyone looking for ways to deal with stress and negative emotions, that’s big news. Although it’s been generally known that breathing exercises can have a calming affect on emotions, the researchers’ findings could provide a scientific explanation for why hyperventilation makes us anxious, or why breathing slowly can calm us down.

“It has considerable potential for therapeutic use.”

The findings stem from ongoing research on the respiratory or breathing pacemaker, a cluster of neurons in the brainstem. Called the pre-Bötzinger complex (or preBötC), it was initially discovered in mice in 1991 by study co-author Jack Feldman, a professor of neurology at UCLA. Since then, the structure has been identified and studied in humans. Feldman and study co-authors Mark Krasnow and Kevin Yackle have also identified and studied the preBötC neurons in mice that affect sighing in 2016. Their latest findings continue this research, focusing more on how these neurons affect breathing, emotional states, and alertness, which scientists call arousal.

“It’s a tie between breathing itself and changes in emotional state and arousal that we had never looked at before,” says Feldman. “It has considerable potential for therapeutic use.”

In their research, the scientists identified and studied 175 of these preBötC neurons. By eliminating these neurons in the mice, the mice’s major breathing patterns were unchanged, but they became significantly calmer. That finding led to the discovery of a link between the preBötC and another brainstem structure which affects arousal, called the locus coeruleus. In other words, they found the neural circuit that causes us to be anxious when we breathe rapidly, and calm when we breathe slowly.

The discovery was not what the scientists had initially set out to find

That discovery, however, was accidental. When the scientists started their work, they wanted to identify key neurons involved in generating the breathing rhythm, according to Yackle, the lead author of the study and a faculty fellow at the University of California-San Francisco. When they targeted these specific neurons, they expected them to be important for breathing.

“So initially I was very disappointed to find that they were not involved in generating the breathing rhythm, but then very surprised when we found that they are instead important for controlling the arousal state of the animal,” says Yackle in an email statement to The Verge. “Although in retrospect we might now appreciate that this neural circuit would exist, I would have never predicted it going into these studies.”

The ties between these neurons and brainstem structures have different practical applications. Many people already use pranayama, the meditative breathing exercises found in several varieties of yoga, in order to enter a calm emotional state. Some of us might be deliberately utilizing these pathways on a regular basis by intentionally slowing our breathing to relax ourselves.

“By changing patterns of breathing, we can change our emotional states and how we think and how we interact with the world.”

Slowing one’s breath through breathing exercises is already in use for some kinds of anxiety disorders, and has been systemized by some organizations such as Breath-Body-Mind. Led by Patricia Gerbarg, an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at New York Medical School and author of a 2009 study on pranayama, the group has teamed up with therapists in locations such as Berlin to relieve stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma in refugees by using movement, breathing and meditative practices.

“By changing patterns of breathing, we can change our emotional states and how we think and how we interact with the world,” says Gerbarg. “That’s a very powerful tool for psychological practices.”

The newly discovered neural pathways, however, might be targets for drugs, especially for panic and anxiety disorders which can be triggered by hyperventilation, according to Yackle. By designing drugs that specifically target the place in the brain where anxiety and hyperventilation are linked, scientists may be able to help people with these disorders to lower the likelihood of panic attacks — which are typically characterized by difficulty maintaining normal breath.

Yackle plans to continue studying the breathing pacemaker region, and hopes to identify the neural types that generate breathing rhythm

Gerbarg, however, warns that much more work need to be done before the study’s findings are fully applicable to humans. In part, this is because you can’t ethically knock out nerves in humans. “It takes a few more steps to get it to a clinical matter,” says Gerbarg.

Some of these next steps might include silencing this neural circuit, and seeing if that prevents anxiety caused by hyperventilation, says Yackle. He plans to continue studying the breathing pacemaker region, and hopes to identify the neural types that generate breathing rhythm.

For many of us, the practicality of these findings boils down to having scientific evidence that confirms what we already know: our breathing is related to our emotional state, and slowing breath really can calm you down. So if you’re worried about Congress clearing the way for internet providers to sell your web browsing history, it might be time to take a few deep breaths — that way you won’t panic.

Amazon launches new service to deliver groceries to your trunk

2017-03-28T11:26:23-04:00

After launching physical bookstores and attempting to launch a cashier-free convenience store, Amazon will be diving into another kind of physical retail venue: grocery stores.

With the beta launch of the AmazonFresh Pickup today, Amazon will give customers the ability to order groceries, drive up to an AmazonFresh location, and have the food delivered to their trunk. Orders can be filled in as little as 15 minutes, according to a video announcement from Amazon.

The first two locations are in the Seattle area

Among the items that customers can purchase are meats, produce, bread, dairy, and household items, and there’s no order minimum. The service will be free to Amazon Prime subscribers, but during the beta launch period, it will only be usable by Amazon employees, reports TechCrunch. The two AmazonFresh stores are in Seattle’s SODO and Ballard neighborhoods, as reported by GeekWire last week when permit fillings for the locations surfaced.

Rumors of the concept first surfaced back in 2015

Reports of the AmazonFresh Pickup service emerged back in 2015, when Amazon said that it wanted to build physical locations where customers could pick up preordered groceries; at the time the proposed location was Sunnyvale, California. In the initial plans, customers would also select a pickup time window after placing an order, and they can swing by to pick them up during that time period.

The AmazonFresh Pickup service is one of the company’s many food-related ventures. Last year, it also launched its own private-label food, Wickedly Prime.

Xbox unveils Wireless Controller Tech Series

2017-03-21T15:28:32-04:00

Photo by Microsoft

Microsoft announced today that the first controller in its Wireless Controller Tech Series will start shipping worldwide on April 25th. The Recon Tech Special Edition will be available for $70, which is also the standard price for special color controllers.

For the new controller series, Microsoft drew inspiration from military tech and sci-fi gear. While the other controllers in the series have yet to be announced, the Recon Tech controller features a laser-etched gray front with gold accents and insignia, while textured diamond rubberized grips are on the back. Similar military-inspired controllers can be expected as Microsoft continues to roll out the series ahead of its scheduled Project Scorpio launch around the holiday season.

A design inspired by military tech and sci-fi gear

Like Xbox’s other wireless controllers, the new controller will include improved wireless range and Bluetooth Tech for Windows 10 and Samsung VR gaming. Custom button mapping is also available through the Xbox Accessories App.

The controller will be compatible with the upcoming Copilot feature on Xbox One, allowing gamers to use two Xbox wireless controllers as one. The feature is intended for people playing with less-experienced gamers, or for those who need custom key configurations to play. Xbox One owners who don’t want to shell out for the fancy new controller can get the Copilot feature through a creators update later this year.

DeepMind adds memory to its AI system to tackle multiple Atari games

2017-03-15T15:20:56-04:00

When Google announced in February 2015 that its DeepMind AI beat 49 Atari video games, it was a major step forward for machine learning, but it left the team behind DeepMind with a frustrating situation. Even though the AI could beat the games, it needed to be retrained to beat each new game, and quickly forgot how to play a game after it had moved on to the next one.

The researchers at DeepMind, however, have developed an algorithm to solve the problem: Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC).

DeepMind developed EWC in order to overcome a phenomenon known as “catastrophic forgetting”

As explained in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal and an accompanying blog post, EWC allowed DeepMind’s AI to overcome the issues it encountered back in 2014. With EWC, the AI is now able to retain knowledge of the games and is able to learn multiple games in succession.

DeepMind developed EWC in order to overcome a phenomenon known as “catastrophic forgetting,” where new tasks and adaptations overwrite previously acquired knowledge and memories. The researchers explain in the paper that this usually occurs because the deep neural networks used for machine learning are typically only capable of learning multiple tasks when data is presented all at once. Human brains, in contrast, learn things sequentially.

“We hope that this research represents a step towards programs that can learn in a more flexible and efficient way.”

While the researchers state that today’s “computer programs cannot learn from data adaptively and in real time,” they “hope that this research represents a step towards programs that can learn in a more flexible and efficient way.” They also say that their research “progresses our understanding of how consolidation happens in the human brain” by using neuroscience-based theories about acquired skills and memories in human brains. DeepMind’s further development of machine learning and memory represents progress toward more advanced AI, even though today’s AI tech still face major problems.

Previous DeepMind experiments include pitting AIs against each other to see if they would fight or cooperate, and defeating legendary Go player Lee Se-Dol.

You can now use Alexa to control your Roomba

2017-03-15T12:06:20-04:00

If the most effort you’ve ever wanted to put into cleaning your home is yelling at your Roomba while watching it from the couch, then you’re in luck.

iRobot announced today that an Amazon Alexa skill will be available for Roomba 900 Series vacuum owners in the US starting sometime in quarter 2. That means yelling “Alexa, ask Roomba to begin cleaning” will be enough to get your vacuum robot going. Customers will be able to use simple voice commands to start, stop, and pause cleaning jobs, all without the minimal amounts of effort previously required to operate their Roombas.

Alexa voice commands can also control some vacuum robots by Neato and Samsung

In addition to push notifications on the status of cleaning jobs, the iRobot Home App will also gain a new Clean Map feature starting today. It will track your Roomba’s performance as it cleans your home, allowing you to view a map of the areas it cleaned and in which areas it cleaned the most dirt. The Clean Map reports will be accessible through the app’s history tab.

While iRobot’s work has focused largely on the Roomba, the company’s chairman and CEO, Colin Angle, has high hopes for the future of the smart home and the Roomba’s role in that future. In a press release Angle said, “These are exciting next steps towards our vision of an ecosystem of home robots that work collaboratively and further enable the smart home.” He told TechCrunch he expects this to become a reality in “single digit years.”

iRobot, however, is not the first company to integrate Alexa voice commands with its vacuum robots for optimal user laziness. In November, iRobot competitor Neato rolled out software that allowed customers to control their Botvac connected robots through Alexa voice commands. Samsung also unveiled a vacuum robot that could be controlled with Alexa in December.

Gone but not forgotten: how ancient Neanderthal genes still affect modern people

2017-02-23T12:00:00-05:00

Neanderthals died out a long time ago, but their genes may make us more susceptible to certain diseases.

DNA inherited from Neanderthals affects which of our genes are turned on or off, according to a study published today in Cell. This phenomenon, called regulation of gene expression, means that traits such as height and susceptibility to diseases like schizophrenia or lupus may be affected in people with Neanderthal ancestry, say scientists from the University of Washington in Seattle.

The study found that the effects of Neanderthal genes were “pervasive”

This isn’t the first study to show that Neanderthal genes may affect modern humans: last year, a study previously published in Science found a small but measurable tie between Neanderthal genes and certain skin and blood conditions. It also suggested that certain conditions and susceptibilities inherited from Neanderthals may have served a useful purpose at one point. People who aren’t of African descent can thank Neanderthals for 1 to 4 percent of their genes.

This new study uses genetic data from tissues instead of medical records, and looks specifically at how the Neanderthal sequences affect which genes are turned on or off in modern humans, says Joshua Akey, co-author of the study and geneticist at the University of Washington. The researchers found that the effects of Neanderthal genes were “pervasive.”

“We carry a lot of the Neanderthal genome in scattered bits and pieces among individuals today, and if we understand the Neanderthal genome and its function better, then we’ll understand the human genome and its function better,” says Akey.

The researchers sampled 52 tissues in the body. All of them showed no preference for the human-pattern or Neanderthal-pattern gene expression — except two, the brains and the testes. In the brains and testes, the Neanderthal versions of genes were rarely active. That suggests that gene regulation between modern humans and Neanderthals differed the most in those tissues, Akey says.

“It changes our view of how we understand ourselves as a species and how we understand human evolution.”

“I think it’s a really exciting study,” says Sriram Sankararaman, a computer scientist and geneticist at UCLA, who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s answering a really important question in human evolution.”

The influence of Neanderthal genes on traits also reveals that we have changed as a species as a result of ancient interbreeding. “I think that’s very exciting to see,” says Rasmus Nielsen, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who did not work on the study. “It changes our view of how we understand ourselves as a species and how we understand human evolution.”

The researchers used a massive public dataset to study 52 different tissues across 214 individuals. Called the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project, the dataset catalogues RNA levels in 53 tissues across multiple individuals. It was so complex that the researches developed their own statistical method in order to take full advantage of its features.

“This is a clever use of a large publicly available dataset to investigate an important evolutionary question about the effects of interbreeding with Neanderthals on modern humans,” John Capra, principle investigator at Vanderbilt University’s Capra Lab who did not work on the study, said in an email to The Verge.

The lab is looking to study descendants of the Denisovan people in their next project

Sankararaman says that the study’s design also shows a possible way forward in researching Neanderthal DNA. While the researchers used a dataset to analyze multiple tissues in individuals, looking elsewhere might lead to new discoveries. “One big direction is, what happens when you look at additional tissues that have not been sampled so far and look at what genes are turned on and off and how Neanderthal genes affect the regulation,” says Sankararaman.

The next project the group plans to tackle is gene expression in people of Melanesian ancestry, who carry sequences inherited from the Denisovan people. Akey also says that he’s interested in analyzing geographically diverse populations, and believes that studying worldwide populations may lead to the discovery of previously unknown groups of archaic humans.

The new study might also help researchers better understand the functional aspects of genetics and our shared evolutionary history, says Nielsen. Even though the last time that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred was tens of thousands of years ago, the consequences remain measurable. For Akey, that’s “fascinating.”