Following my piece on the French election below, today’s news sparked me to write another (more speculative, and less truly explanatory) piece about Britain’s forthcoming election. It’s here.

A lot of people went to bed on the night of November 8, 2016, confident that they would wake up to news of President-elect Hillary Clinton’s election victory. This is not, of course, what happened. Donald Trump’s stunning win confounded pollsters and pundits alike, much as had the UK’s decision to Brexit months earlier.

Political unpredictability has continued apace in 2017, and France’s presidential election represents an early test of whether the nationalistic tremors of 2016 will continue to haunt liberal democracy in its heartlands. One thing’s for sure: no-one can confidently predict the results of this contest. But to borrow a phrase, there are some known unknowns to brush up on ahead of time.

How does France elect a president?

Presidential elections in France are a two-step process, with the top two candidates from this Sunday’s first round progressing to a head-to-head run-off a fortnight later – which means that, whatever happens, we won’t know who’ll become France’s next president on Sunday, but we know who won’t. The two-stage system aside, the process is quite straightforward – the candidates with the largest vote totals progress.

So who’s in the running?

In recent years, two main parties have dominated French politics: the left-wing Socialists, and the center-right Republicans. The current president is Socialist François Hollande, who announced last year that he would not seek re-election, in large part due to staggeringly low approval ratings, which hit an eye-popping low of 4% (not a typo!) late last year.

As in any election without the incumbent running, the field is wide open this year – albeit to an extent unprecedented in French politics, for several reasons. First, with or without Hollande, France’s Socialist party is in disarray: similar to Democrats in the US and the UK’s Labour Party, it is riven by in-fighting between left wing forces and more centrist impulses.

This has served to fragment the electorate. The official Socialist candidate, Benoît Hamon, is struggling under the weight of his predecessor’s unpopularity. Meanwhile, two former Socialist ministers, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron, have each seized chunks of the party’s traditional vote from the left and the right with their own new movements, Unsubmissive France and En Marche!, respectively.

The right wing has also splintered. The National Front, led by Marine Le Pen – the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who scored a place in the run-off election in 2002 – has seized on antipathy towards Muslim immigrants to lead many first-round polls this year. Meanwhile François Fillon, the Republican candidate, is riven by allegations of financial impropriety relating to salaries given to members of his family, which have threatened to upend his candidacy.

OK, so it’s a broad field. But who’s going to win?

It’s very hard to predict who will make it through to the run-off – let alone win – but right now there are four viable candidates who, polls suggest, each clustered at between 18% and 23% of the vote. Mélenchon, with a radically leftist agenda, has been gaining recently at the expense of Hamon, and is running at around 18%, for what would be a close-fought fourth. Fillon has resisted calls – even from among his own party – to drop out, and his support seems to have stabilized, as he is currently running in a close third. Macron and Le Pen, meanwhile, have been trading the lead for the last few weeks, with each averaging around 23% of the vote.

The state of the French presidential polls at the time of writing. (Wikipedia)

The results of the run-off will depend, of course, on who makes it through. As things stand, one candidate – Macron – would win his head-to-head with each of the other three viable candidates, while another – Le Pen – would lose all of hers. (Mélenchon beats Fillon in the least-likely match-up.) But polling the run-off accurately is difficult while other candidates remain in the race, particularly when three out of the four leading candidates represent parties who have never won the presidency. In particular, if Fillon continues his comeback and makes it through to the run-off against Le Pen, the achingly familiar prospect of an experienced but scandal-plagued establishment candidate losing to a xenophobic outsider seems plausible.

How important is this election?

In a word, very. In constitutional terms, the French presidency represents something of a middle way between a mostly-symbolic head of state like the German presidency, and the powerful executive in the American system. Compared with America, periods of “cohabitation” – where one party controls parliament while another occupies the presidency – have been relatively rare, and in these instances, the president tends to take a back seat.

But one area in which French presidents have the most control is in foreign affairs, and France’s election this year represents, in a certain sense, another referendum on the European Union. Only the far-right Le Pen has vowed to leave the Euro currency, but both she and Mélenchon have adopted the fateful promise made by Britain’s David Cameron to renegotiate France’s relationship with the EU and put the resulting settlement to a formal referendum vote.

Meanwhile, Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been open about their mutual respect, and Fillon is also notably more comfortable with Russia than other Republican figures – while Macron, the only avowedly pro-European candidate has been hit with a barrage of cyberattacks and fake news. Again all this sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because it is.

Both politically and geographically, France is much more central to the European project than Britain ever was, so a rebuke by voters would represent a much more existential threat to the Union – creating precisely the kind of instability that Russia’s Putin is said to want.

What else is there to know?

The polls are changing daily, and the election is now too close to call, according per multiple outlets. While this uncertainty creates volatility, in everything from markets to geopolitics, at least pundits and the public alike are more prepared for multiple outcomes than they were on the mornings of June 24 and November 9, 2016, when British and American voters created political earthquakes. It’s always useful to know what you don’t know.

Amongst the many stories of Uber’s recent controversies, you may have heard of a lawsuit between Waymo and Uber. The case centers on intellectual property infringement, which is already a complicated, technical issue on its own when you break down how a judge or jury determines if the technology is infringing on a patent.

Let’s break down just what’s going on in this situation:

What is Waymo?

To understand what Waymo is, we need to go back to Google Co-Founder Larry Page’s open letter in which he announced that Google would become a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a holding company that will be the parent company for several of the company’s endeavors. This includes X, the company’s “moonshot factory” or investment lab, GV and CapitalG, the company’s two investment arms, and Waymo, the company’s self-driving car project that spun out of X.

Waymo began as a self-driving car research project at X (then called Google X) in 2009. The name Waymo, which Alphabet unveiled in 2016, is short for “a new way forward in mobility.”

Seems like a weird phrase to shorthand.

Yes, yes it does.

Let’s go back to this Alphabet company. Why was it created and did it replace Google?

Google still exists and includes everything you would associate with the brand: search, ads, YouTube, Maps, Chrome, and Android. But now it’s one of several entities under the Alphabet umbrella.

When it comes to the why, that’s a bit trickier to explain. There’s plenty of speculation that the creation of Alphabet is all about improving visibility into the company’s operations and revenue breakdown for investors. Each of these companies now operates independently, with separate budgets and revenue that are reported out in the quarterly earnings the company is required to file by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the the governing body of the US financial markets.

So, back to Waymo. Why was it spun out of X?

Companies are spun out of X when they’ve moved past the research stage and are ready for commercialization. If Alphabet is confident the company has a sound business model and product that’s ready for the market, it’s moved out of X to become a stand-alone company. According to Waymo CEO John Krafcik, “what you’re feeling from the Waymo team is confidence that we can bring this [technology] to [people].”

How exactly does Uber fit into all of this?

Uber, like many other technology and automotive companies, is developing self-driving car technology of its own as part of its Advanced Technologies Group. CEO Travis Kalanik first began recruiting engineers for the project in Pittsburgh in late 2014.

Pittsburgh seems pretty random.

It’s not. It’s home to Carnegie Melon University (CMU), which has a well-respected robotics department where many of the top experts in the field spent time conducting research. Originally, Uber partnered with CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center to develop the technology. Then, Uber poached about 50 people from CMU, which was about one third of the Center’s researchers.

Wait, Uber stole all of the workers away from its partner?

That’s a story on it’s own. Let’s just say it was not a popular move in the technology community.

Did Uber’s technology from the CMU partnership infringe on Waymo’s patents?

No. The patent infringement issue starts with Otto, a startup that was developing self-driving technology for trucks. The company was founded by former Google employees Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron, Don Burnette, and Claire Delaunay. Levandowski formerly led Google’s self-driving car project and incorporated Otto two weeks after leaving the search giant. The team first announced the existence of the company in May 2016. Only three months later, Uber acquired Otto for $680 million.

Why did Uber acquire Otto? And when are we getting to the patent infringement?

We’re finally getting there. There are a number of reasons Uber bought Otto, including its relationship to car manufacturers, its talent, and its technology. That technology includes LiDAR, or light detection and ranging. LiDAR works by using lasers to detect objects, space, and anything else in an environment by tracking how long it takes for the laser to hit the object and bounce back to create a 3D map. It’s a mechanical form of echolocation. The technology is used for autonomous guided vehicles (aka self-driving cars) to detect everything on and around the road, from other vehicles to obstructions.

This is the technology that Waymo is suing Uber over.

So why does Waymo think Uber is infringing on the LiDAR technology? And when did they file the lawsuit?

The lawsuit began in February. According to Waymo, it all started with an email: “One of our suppliers specializing in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board — except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR design,” the company announced in a Medium post.

That email sparked an investigation by Waymo, which eventually led the company to discover that a month and a half before he resigned, Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 proprietary files, including the designs of the company’s LiDAR technology and circuit board. Waymo also claims that other former Google employees downloaded confidential information about suppliers and manufacturing. The full filing goes into details about just what these employees supposedly stole.

In the filing, Waymo asked the court for an injunction against Uber’s self-driving car program. Translation: Waymo wants to stop Uber from continuing to work on the technology.

How did Uber respond?

Uber released a statement to Business Insider on February 24th denying all allegations, claiming the lawsuit is “a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor.”

Levandowski also released a response of sorts. The Otto founder exercised his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self incrimination on March 30th. He also hired his own criminal counsel for the suit, though he is not formally named in Waymo’s filings.

Uber officially filed its formal response to the lawsuit on April 7th, which included details about the differences in the two company’s LiDAR technologies, the lack of evidence around the 14,000 files.

Did Waymo respond?

Waymo originally claimed that Uber failed to disclose the proper documents related to the lawsuit on April 3rd. Waymo asked Judge William Alsup to compel Uber to produce all of the documents or assume the company is hiding documents.

Waymo also reiterated its claims in its response, saying “Uber’s assertion that they’ve never touched the 14,000 stolen files is disingenuous at best, given their refusal to look in the most obvious place: the computers and devices owned by the head of their self-driving program.”

So where does the lawsuit stand now?

The last update with the lawsuit has to do with Levandowski’s Fifth Amendment claim. William Alsup, the judge presiding over the case, rejected Levandowski’s request and ordered Uber to disclose documents created by a third party when it conducted due diligence for the acquisition of Otto. The due diligence report must be included without any redactions related to Levandowski in a “privilege log,” which is a document a party in a lawsuit produces that they do not think should be opened in court because of the proprietary nature of the material.

Waymo filed the last update in the case, filing an opposition request over Uber’s motion to keep the dispute private by going into arbitration. Uber originally filed for arbitration because of Alphabet’s employee agreements state that any disputes with the company should be settled in arbitration. But Waymo believes this is not a valid claim, as Levandowski is not the defendant in the case, Uber is.

So what now?

Prepare for a long lawsuit filled with more filings and claims. Unless some settlement is reached, the case could be dragged out for months.

This bad. (The link is to a YouTube video. And yes, I know the first slide says it’s under 2 minutes but the video is 2:12. That will be updated in later versions.)

I’ve written about the racial disparity in municipal contracting processes – which sounds dry as sh*t, I’d be the first to admit – but it’s actually really important. (Here’s an Infogr.am graphic I created a couple of years ago on the topic.)

The short version: Black people finance their own discrimination when they pay taxes into a county government that then awards an unfair share of county contracts to businesses owned by white men. This has been happening in the county (and city) where I’m from for decades.

My video is an attempt to explain the issue by stressing the consensus values in the middle of Hallin’s Sphere and the deviance of continuing to use tax dollars to give one group an unfair advantage over another.

Here’s the story I was trying to explain. The story includes the numbers I cite, but people who won’t read the story WILL watch a video.

I’d like to redo it and make it snappier, add some sound effects and pictures. Some of the slides with not much text could have been shorter, but there’s no (easy) way in Keynote to vary the length of the slides.

Creating this was a beast. (Pro tip: If you create a Powerpoint, export the slides as JPEGs and import the JPEGs into iMovie, the stills will be so blurry as to be unreadable. A workaround: Use Keynote to create a slideshow, export it as a QuickTime movie and then upload to YouTube or wherever. Or alternately, get a legit video editor like Premiere or Final Cut.)

I think THIS is the future of news. I’d like to create a series of videos like this, ideally under a minute. The series (#MLK50, referenced at the end of the video) will be focused on how public policy reinforces racial/economic injustice in Memphis – and what policies would create a more economically equitable environment.

My “fierce urgency of now” is that in two years, Memphis will mark the 50th anniversary of the violent interruption of Martin Luther King’s vision of economic equality. King came to Memphis to make sure that local government treated mistreated black sanitation workers fairly, but 48 years later, the black community is still getting the short end of the stick.

I used an NPR’s story about communities that are struggling with the decline of coal industry as a starting point to create my explainer. You can read it on FOLD. 

An explainer on the process refugees go through to relocate to the U.S. — a collaboration from Brittany and me…

From Brussels to Paris, the growing number of terror attacks in the West has bled both fear and ignorance around the number of Syrian refugees resettled in the United States. The Republican presidential frontrunner has even gone so far as to pledge that he will send resettled refugees back to Syria if elected. Yet, for all of the hand-wringing about the influx of potential jihadists, official government data tells another story.

Since the Syrian civil war broke out in March of 2011, just under 2,200 refugees have been admitted into the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, of the 70,000 refugees the United States was able to legally accept in the 2015 fiscal year, roughly 25% were from Burma, 20% from Iraq, and 13% from Somalia.  While the Obama Administration will raise the refugee cap to 85,000 to accommodate 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, Syrians will still make up less than 12% of the total admitted refugee population. Also, while the average processing time for refugees is 18 to 24 months, Syrian applications can take significantly longer because of security concerns and difficulties in verifying their information. Aid organizations currently put the actual processing time at 33 months.

Rather than just throwing more numbers at the reader, we decided to let he or she engage with the Syrian asylum application process directly via Typeform. A survey with style, easy on the eyes Typeform allows the designer to simulate a conversation through “logic jumps”, which adapts the survey based on a respondent’s answer. Try your hand at the journey here.

I heard the phrase “digital divide” for the first time about six months ago. As someone just sticking their toe in to the larger debate around ICTs, net neutrality, and zero-rating products, it’s been a slightly overwhelming dive down the rabbit hole to say the least. It has also lead me to the tool I’ll be introducing today: Uliza.

What is it?

Uliza, which means “ask” in Swahili, is a telephone service that leverages existing technologies in voice recognition, cloud-computing, and translation to provide access to information for the 4.5 billion people who are off-net or illiterate in a major internet language. It is currently being developed for market in East Africa by a team of graduate students at The Fletcher School, MIT, and UC Berkeley.

How does it work?

Anyone with a phone can call a toll-free number, ask a question in their own language, and receive an answer through an automated service, at no cost.

Caller experience: Back-end experience:

Why does it matter?

With only 5% of the world’s languages available on the internet, representing linguistic diversity online continues to be a major challenge. Uliza is one product in growing suite of tools which seek to bridge the information divide between networked and un-networked communities. The original three-person team behind Uliza — who collectively have more than a decade’s worth of experience working in East Africa — chose to roll out Uliza in Kenya due to the high adoption of mobile technology, even among low-income population, growing telecom industry, and a need to scale Swahili-language resources.