Last month the New York Times’ Kashmir Hill published a major story on how GM collects driver behavior data then sells access (through LexisNexis) to insurance companies, which will then jack up your rates.

The absolute bare minimum you could could expect from the auto industry here is that they’re doing this in a way that’s clear to car owners. But of course they aren’t; they’re burying “consent” deep in the mire of some hundred-page end user agreement nobody reads, usually not related to the car purchase — but the apps consumers use to manage roadside assistance and other features.

Since Kashmir’s story was published, she says she’s been inundated with complaints by consumers about similar behavior. She’s even discovered that she’s one of the folks GM spied on and tattled to insurers about. In a follow up story, she recounts how she and her husband bought a Chevy Bolt, were auto-enrolled in a driver assistance program, then had their data (which they couldn’t access) sold to insurers.

GM’s now facing 10 different federal lawsuits from customers pissed off that they were surreptitiously tracked and then forced to pay significantly more for insurance:

“In 10 federal lawsuits filed in the last month, drivers from across the country say they did not knowingly sign up for Smart Driver but recently learned that G.M. had provided their driving data to LexisNexis. According to one of the complaints, a Florida owner of a 2019 Cadillac CTS-V who drove it around a racetrack for events saw his insurance premium nearly double, an increase of more than $5,000 per year.”

GM (and some apologists) will of course proclaim that this is only fair that reckless drivers pay more, but that’s generally not how it works. Pressured for unlimited quarterly returns, insurance companies will use absolutely anything they find in the data to justify rising rates.

And as the sector is getting automated by sloppy AI, those determinations aren’t going to go in your favor (see: AI’s rushed implementation in healthcare). That’s before the fact that consumers aren’t being told about the surveillance, and aren’t given a clear option to stop it. Or that the data is also being sold to a litany of dodgy data brokers who, in turn, see minimal oversight.

If this follows historical precedent, GM will pay out a relative pittance in legal fees and fines, claim they’ve changed their behavior, then simply rename these programs into something else after heavy consultation with their legal department. Something more carefully crafted, with bare-bones consumer alerts, to exploit the fact that the U.S. remains too corrupt to pass even a baseline modern privacy law.

Automakers — which have long had some of the worst privacy reputations in all of tech — are one of countless industries that lobbied relentlessly for decades to ensure Congress never passed a federal privacy law or regulated dodgy data brokers. And that the FTC — the over-burdened regulator tasked with privacy oversight — lacks the staff, resources, or legal authority to police the problem at any real scale.

The end result is just a parade of scandals. And if Hill were so inclined, she could write a similar story about every tech sector in America, given everything from your smart TV and electricity meter to refrigerator and kids’ toys now monitor your behavior and sell access to those insights to a wide range of dodgy data broker middlemen, all with nothing remotely close to ethics or competent oversight.

And despite the fact that this free for all environment is resulting in no limit of dangerous real-world harms, our Congress has been lobbied into gridlock by a cross-industry coalition of companies with near-unlimited budgets, all desperately hoping that their performative concerns about TikTok will distract everyone from the fact we live in a country too corrupt to pass a real privacy law.

Los Angeles Airport's board of commissioners has designated $43.6 million to improve the ways travelers navigate the airport.

A mysterious album filled with photos of smiling happy Nazis picnicking and partying shows up at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007. The first page is inscribed, "Auschwitz, June 21, 1944." Where did it come from, and how should archivists dedicated to preserving the memory of the millions killed in Nazi death camps handle it?

Tight and exquisitely staged, the play Here There Are Blueberries (based on actual events) answers those questions in a riveting 90 minutes. Developed by the Tectonic Theater Project, it is being staged at the New York Theatre Workshop from April 17 until June 2, with a terrific cast including Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America) as the chief archivist.

A former U.S. military intelligence officer picked the album out of a trash can in a house in Frankfurt in 1946. Painstaking and emotionally draining research identified it as the personal album of Auschwitz chief of staff Karl Höcker.

The play's title comes from the inscription on a photo of death camp administrators and their secretaries cheerfully spooning blueberries from bowls as they take a break from mass murder at a rustic countryside resort. As the play proceeds, Höcker's mundane snapshots appear in the background on giant screens.

"The play endeavors to pose the question, 'Where is the line between complacency, complicity, and culpability?'" says Tectonic producer Matt Joslyn. "Especially when we look at the human beings that are just like us who ran Auschwitz."

The global rise of authoritarianism is increasing the risks of "genocide, mass killing or systematic violent repression" against ethnic minorities, notes a 2021 Minority Rights Group report. This superb play could not be more timely or more necessary.

The post Review: <i>Here There Are Blueberries</i> Investigates a Nazi Photo Album appeared first on Reason.com.

For the last decade or two, Hollywood, like the rest of America, has been marked by a sex recession. Depictions of lovemaking, not long ago a fixture of big-screen productions, all but went away. Nudity practically disappeared, especially in big-budget productions. The number of studio-produced romantic comedies dwindled. Children's films dropped lovestruck princess plots that resolved in weddings for journeys of empowerment and therapeutic self-discovery.

There were myriad reasons for the shift: Some of it was a product of #MeToo, and a growing sense that on-screen sex and nudity were both unnecessary and exploitative. Some of it resulted from the rise of superhero movies and the decline in films targeting adult moviegoers. Ironically, the shift occurred in concurrence with changes in physical appearance, especially among male leads, who bulked up and got shredded for larger-than-life superhero roles. The result was a curious on-screen world in which, as one writer put it, "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny."

So it is somewhat jolting to see a movie in which everyone is beautiful and also very, very horny. Indeed, sexual desire, and the way it infuses so many aspects of one's life, is the subject of Challengers. It's a delirious, delightful, love-triangle romp—not only the horniest tennis movie you'll ever see, but the horny tennis movie Hollywood needs.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino from a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers tells the story of three ambitious tennis players who love and lust for each other. There's Mike Faist as Art Donaldson, the studious nice guy of the group. There's Josh O'Connor as Patrick Zweig, the charming-but-erratic striver who can't quite get his act together. And connecting the two, there's Tashi Duncan, played by Zendaya, a should-have-been superstar who switched to coaching after an injury derailed her tennis career.

Kuritzkes' script flitters back and forth in time, taking viewers from the moment the trio first meets at a juniors tournament to the peak of their careers, showing the trio coming together and coming apart. The nonlinear narrative, which spans a decade or so, captures the ebb and flow of desire and the ways it can turn into an obsession over time.

Zendaya's Duncan is the pendulum that swings between the two male leads, but it's clear they're competing for more than just her attention. A crucial scene, early in the movie, depicts the trio perched on a hotel bed in a three-way kiss shortly after they first meet: As it lingers, Duncan leans back, watching with satisfaction as the two men continue the kiss without her. For her, the pleasure is in both attention and power, and even more specifically in converting the former into the latter.

Part of what makes Challengers so invigorating is that it understands the complexities of adult desire, the interplay between attraction to another and how that person reflects on the self. It's a movie about how lust and love and heartbreak are all tied up with ambition and self-perception, and the ways those change over time: In college, Duncan falls for Patrick because of his edge, his rakish charm. But after her injury, she marries Art for his stability, his calm competence, his compliant willingness to be guided and molded by her. With Duncan as wife and coach, Art becomes a top-ranked tennis player; his career is the life she couldn't have.

In every scene, every interaction, every serve, and every line of dialogue, you see the connection between sport, ambition, sex, power, and self-definition. The three young leads bring deep vulnerability to their performances. But rather than softness or tenderness, that vulnerability takes the form of burning, high-stakes desire. Guadagnino makes Challengers a movie about wanting, in every aspect of life. Tennis, for this trio, is a game and a career, but it is also a love language, an intimate, intense, highly physical exchange between two people seeking total understanding of themselves and each other.

Did you ever think that tennis is a lot like sex? might seem like a thin conceptual reed on which to hang a movie, but Kuritzkes' screenplay keeps finding new ways to explore the power dynamics of the game, and meta-game of lust and ambition around it. Guadagnino, meanwhile, directs with such verve that it never settles into blandness; at times he captures tennis matches from underneath the court, or with POV shots of tennis balls flying between rackets. A pulsing, witty score from Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—their best film work since the score for The Social Network—keeps energy levels high. Reznor and Ross' playful, EDM-influenced soundtrack underscores the movie's metaphorical conceit, that tennis and sex and desire are a sensual dance of domination and submission.

Challengers is not a gratuitous film in terms of nudity or explicit sexuality. But its heat levels are off the charts. There is an unapologetic sense of erotic intensity, a libidinous spark rooted in star power and silver screen glamour, that has recently been too absent from the big screen. Challengers will not, on its own, end Hollywood's sex recession. But as an indicator, this one goes a long way toward bringing sexy back.

The post <i>Challengers</i> Is the Horny Tennis Movie Hollywood Needs appeared first on Reason.com.

Apple has rejected Spotify's latest iOS app update in the European Union. The update included pricing information and subscription options for payments outside the iPhone app. Spotify isn't happy. Read more...

Recently, firmware and chipset support for AMD's next gen Zen 5 (Ryzen 9000) series processors were added. Now, a leak has revealed the alleged specifications of the next-gen Ryzen Strix Halo APUs. Read more...