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Input:
'Blackbox' insurance devices raise privacy concerns
 Forecast is a series exploring the future of AI and automation in a variety of different sectors—from the arts to city building to finance—to find out what the latest developments might mean for humanity's road ahead. We'll hear from Nikolas Badminton, David Usher, Jennifer Keesmaat, Heather Knight, Madeline Ashby and Director X, among others. Created by Motherboard in partnership with Audi.

Every day, approximately nine people are killed in the United States in car crashes related to distracted driving, and nearly 1,100 more are injured. In 2015, the National Safety Council, a nonprofit that promotes health and safety, reported cell phones were involved in 27 percent of all crashes in the US.

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In Canada, one estimate says distracted driving deaths have increased 26 percent in the past decade, and someone in Ontario is injured in a distracted driving-related collision every 30 minutes.

Cell phones are largely to blame for this increase in distracted driving. Lawmakers have sought to legislate the problem away, yet it remains; we’re addicted to our screens, even when that addiction could potentially kill us or others.

The tech world has taken notice and launched dozens of apps in recent years to combat the use of cellphones while driving. Live2Txt and LifeSaver, for example, block incoming calls or text messages while you’re driving.

Others, like TrueMotion, use AI algorithms to detect when you’re driving, where you’re going, what type of vehicle you’re in, how you’re using the phone (text messaging, calls, etc.) and provides a drive score that includes all of your distracted driving incidents, and when they happened.

The company (formerly Censio) touts increased safety and the potential monetary benefits of providing that safe driving data to your insurance company, but some critics are concerned about the privacy implications of apps that track your every movement without your complete knowledge.

“It’s extending the Facebook model to insurance, which is what people had been worried about for a very long time,” Madeline Ashby, a futurist and science fiction writer, told Motherboard. “You’d be surrendering vast amounts of data about yourself, from which patterns can be inferred and used against you by a judgemental system.”

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And then there’s the privacy implications of all this data, including where drivers have been, how long they were there, and other patterns they might not want others to know.

According to the terms of use for the Nexar dashcam, for example, “We reserve the right to store incidents and time-lapse photography indefinitely in order to support the ratings assigned to drivers' license plate numbers.”

Brad Cordova, co-founder of TrueMotion, told Motherboard the issue of who actually owns the data can vary based on the insurer and their agreements with clients.

“Insurance companies don’t really want all the data … they care more about the customer experience,” he said. “I think this is an ongoing discussion about who owns the data [and] when.”

The app and others like it are all part of a larger move toward so-called “usage based insurance” (UBI). This market is growing, with as many as 10 different UBI products available in almost every US state.

TrueMotion always runs in the background and uses your phone's own speed and GPS sensors, along with deep learning algorithms, to contextualize your movement and determine how your phone is being used. It can detect what kind of vehicle you’re in (a bus has a different vibration pattern from a car, for example) and whether you’re the driver or passenger. If can detect speed, sudden braking or acceleration, how far the phone is from your face, and if the device is up to your ear or sitting in a phone mount.

Cordova said it helps make the insurance process fairer for good drivers, because it can eliminate the traditional method of categorizing drivers by age and gender and instead helps companies base their rates on actual driving habits.

In May, Forbes reported a good score can earn a 20 percent premium discount from Progressive Insurance, while bad drivers can see hikes of 10 percent.

Ashby, however, worries that by using data we might not realize we’re giving up creates an unfair advantage for insurance companies. You might not even be aware of some of your driving habits, but the insurance companies are and they can ding you in the pocketbook, she said. Worse, they might examine other factors unrelated to driving performance (such as the kind of music you listen to) and make assumptions about your driving habits.

Output: Devices using artificial intelligence to track driving habits are being criticised on the grounds that users are often unclear about how private their data is. Concerns range from drivers being under surveillance by insurers to data being sold to unknown third parties. “It’s extending the Facebook model to insurance, which is what people had been worried about for a very long time,” said Madeline Ashby, a futurist and science fiction writer. However, providers of the technology argue that using this data to determine pricing allows good drivers to get lower premiums and risky driving to be properly assessed.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Google, Facebook can't control their algorithms
 If you searched Google immediately after the recent mass shooting in Texas for information on the gunman, you would have seen what Justin Hendrix, the head of the NYC Media Lab, called a “misinformation gutter.” A spokesperson for Google later gave a statement to Gizmodo that placed blame squarely on an algorithm:

"The search results appearing from Twitter, which surface based on our ranking algorithms, are changing second by second and represent a dynamic conversation that is going on in near real-time. For the queries in question, they are not the first results we show on the page. Instead, they appear after news sources, including our Top Stories carousel which we have been constantly updating. We’ll continue to look at ways to improve how we rank tweets that appear in search."

In other words, it was an algorithm — not a human making editorial decisions — that was responsible for this gaffe. But as Gizmodo’s Tom McKay pointed out, this kind of framing is intentional and used frequently by Twitter and other social networks when problems arise.

He writes: “Google, Twitter, and Facebook have all regularly shifted the blame to algorithms when this happens, but the issue is that said companies write the algorithms, making them responsible for what they churn out.”

Algorithms can be gamed, algorithms can be trained on biased information, and algorithms can shield platforms from blame. Mike Ananny puts it this way:

By continually claiming that it is a technology company — not a media company — Facebook can claim that any perceived errors in Trending Topics or News Feed products are the result of algorithms that need tweaking, artificial intelligence that needs more training data, or reflections of users. It claims that it is not taking any editorial position.

Platforms rely on these algorithms to perform actions at scale, but algorithms at scale also become increasingly inscrutable, even to the people who wrote the code. In her recent TED Talk about the complexity of AI, Zeynep Tufekci points out that not even the people behind Facebook’s algorithms truly understand them:

We no longer really understand how these complex algorithms work. We don't understand how they're doing this categorization. It's giant matrices, thousands of rows and columns, maybe millions of rows and columns, and not the programmers and not anybody who looks at it, even if you have all the data, understands anymore how exactly it's operating any more than you'd know what I was thinking right now if you were shown a cross section of my brain. It's like we're not programming anymore, we're growing intelligence that we don't truly understand.

This is problematic for journalism. We cannot write about what we cannot see, but we increasingly write about what we think will be surfaced by these algorithms, which generate eyeballs, which then generate clicks, which then generate an increasingly smaller pool of digital ad dollars (the majority of which are now going to Facebook and Google.)

And despite our (perhaps) growing unease with these platforms, we still rely on the them for distribution. In their excellent report on the convergence between publishers and platforms, Emily Bell and Taylor Owen write that “A growing number of news organizations see investing in social platforms as the only prospect for a sustainable future, whether for traffic or for reach,” echoing what Franklin Foer recently wrote in The Atlantic about The New Republic’s increasing dependency on these platforms — and what their algorithms might surface: “Dependence generates desperation — a mad, shameless chase to gain clicks through Facebook, a relentless effort to game Google’s algorithms. It leads media outlets to sign terrible deals that look like self-preserving necessities: granting Facebook the right to sell their advertising, or giving Google permission to publish articles directly on its fast-loading server. In the end, such arrangements simply allow Facebook and Google to hold these companies ever tighter.”

Maciej Ceglowski

This reliance on algorithmic click-chasing was the basis for a recent essay by Maciej Ceglowski, who runs a bookmarking site called Pinboard and frequently writes about socio-technological issues. He traces one story that burgeoned out of Amazon’s “frequently bought together” algorithm, and then spread very quickly to other media outlets, despite little evidence that it was true. Justification for republishing, he wrote, was often because other news outlets had already reported on it. He writes: “Together with climate change, this algorithmic takeover of the public sphere is the biggest news story of the early 21st century. We desperately need journalists to cover it. But as they grow more dependent on online publishing for their professional survival, their capacity to do this kind of reporting will disappear, if it has not disappeared already.”

Our conversation is below.

You write that "the real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism." But it seems like there's also an additional threat here – that there's an increasing reliance on using these algorithms and tools to show what’s performing well on competitors' social media sites to find story ideas.

I'm curious to get your thoughts on how so many news organizations wind up with the same piece on the same topic — and how we move away from click-chasing when so many are reliant on clicks to pay the bills.

It’s important not to confuse individual tools with the broader structural problems in journalism that make people feel those tools are necessary. The tool(s) you mention (and many others like it) are a symptom of the broader problem, which is that social networks have become the primary distribution channel for news. News organizations have become wholly dependent on Facebook and Google in particular for online distribution, and for whatever revenue they still get, but the interests of those two companies do not align with those of journalists or the public. The problem is the casino, not the specific slot machines in it.

Are there ways to build reward mechanisms or incentives into search/social to combat this mentality of click-chasing? If it's not going to come from the publishers, could it come from elsewhere? Tech workers? Who has the leverage here to create change?

There is no technical solution for this problem. Publishers need to find a way to isolate journalists from the immediate pressure of click chasing, while finding a way to keep the lights on that is less reliant on Google and Facebook. In particular, we need some way to insulate working journalists from the pressure to pile on to stories they don’t have adequate time to research, and the pressure to evaluate their success by clicks and virality on a per-story basis.

The only people who have the leverage to change the rules of the casino are tech workers. Even a small group of specialized workers at Google or Facebook, if they made a concerted effort, have enough clout that they could push through policies that would improve the state of online journalism. But they have so far declined to use this power, even for modest workplace changes in their own self interest.

Who do you think is covering algorithms well and accurately? How would you like to see them covered?

Just like the story of industrial revolution was not really about valves and pistons, what’s happening around machine learning is not tied to the details of the implementation. The real story of algorithms and machine learning is how these technologies are affecting communities and societies. The algorithm story only makes sense when it’s rooted in a larger context of power relationships between people.

Journalists should not be intimidated by the technical content of machine learning, which despite its name and reputation is not prohibitively complex. The distinguishing feature of machine learning in our era is that its implementation is simple but inscrutable, even to the programmers who build it. You feed massive data sets into a fairly simple mathematical contraption, and get useful results. But you can’t point to why you got those results, any more than a brain surgeon can point to individual thoughts in your head.

Two key points I wish journalists would remember: first, for machine learning to be effective, it has to train on truly enormous amounts of user data. This drives a dynamic of restless and aggressive surveillance.

Second, when these techniques fail, they fail in ways that are not human. AI is simple math, there's no room in it for ethics, or common sense, or empathy. Some of the egregious errors we will catch, but a lot of them we will not. These systems, which would require an extraordinary level of oversight to run safely, are being deployed across the planet by naive Stanford grads with almost no human supervision, for profit, and have the potential to profoundly reshape our society.

Is it even possible to cover these systems well and accurately? If material cannot be found, it basically doesn't exist — so what's the line, and how do journalists balance?

Journalists have painted themselves into an ethical corner, because their work is hostage to the same surveillance and distribution system that is destroying their profession. They deserve some of the blame for this.

Moreover, Google has shown itself to be aggressive towards criticism that starts to hit home. But journalists are supposed to be good at confronting power. Weaning media outlets off of Facebook, and off of online ads as the sole source of revenue, will create some space for more assertive and skeptical coverage of that world.

It's almost like we need a technical ombudsman to assess these things. I'm curious what you think of that — or what role(s) within a newsroom should be taking this on. It's an ethical question, but usually the people who think about ethics in newsrooms come from a news background, not a technical one.

What you need is just a regular ombudsman, vigilant against the corrosive effects of click chasing, rushed deadlines, and herd behavior.

The technical machinery of the online ad casino is not what's vital here. What’s important is countering its effects. Witness just the last week of news, where a humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico got almost no front-page coverage because news organizations (correctly) determined that they would get the most clicks by covering a feud between the President and the NFL. At one point, the NYT had eight NFL feud stories on its front page, while millions of Puerto Ricans went without water or power.

It doesn’t take someone steeped in algorithms to point out that this is a shameful dereliction of journalistic duty. It just takes an independent voice within the organization unafraid to speak up. But the New York Times just got rid of its ombudsman role.

How do we effectively cover the technical organizations that sponsor our conferences?

If you want to bite the hand that feeds you, it’s good to have somewhere else to eat. Stop letting them sponsor your conferences! Switch to a cheaper hotel, have the conference in Dayton instead of New York, do whatever you have to do to wean yourselves off that sweet, sweet tech money. I can pass the hat for this among tech workers, if you think it will help.

But stop cozying up to the people destroying your profession. I have been to these news conferences and watched Google baldly assert that it lacks the resources to prune fake news, while prominent journalists nodded along. It was embarrassing to even watch.

Focus less on the technology (where it’s easy to fall prey to bullshit) and much more on the power relationships and which way the money flows. Talk to technical experts and cultivate technical sources. Don’t let the big tech companies intimidate you.

[Disclosure: Poynter receives funding from Google News Lab.]

What's the answer here? Like, what do we do? Reporters aren't going to be given more time to write up stories, they need to file, they have Crowdtangle and Chartbeat and Twitter Trends and ways to see what's resonating — what's the way forward?

Recognize that you are going down a path of no return for your profession. The online ad racket thrives on novelty, and you will be forever chasing new formats, with diminishing returns, while upstarts with no ideological scruples like Breitbart eat your lunch. Stop looking at which of your stories ‘resonate’, based on clicks and views, and find an alternative way to evaluate your work that is not so granular. Otherwise you’re doomed. Doooomed.

Evaluate reporters base on their aggregate body of work, not on each individual story. Burn your tracking codes. Give people a way to pay you directly, rather than through ads. Stop enabling surveillance.

Reporters have been busy, harried and on deadline since the first newspaper. That’s part of the professional identity. But you’re also prone to self-pity in a way that doesn’t do credit to your industry. Get out there and bust heads.

Switching gears for a second, I'm curious how you come up with the longform essay topics on your blog. You’ve written about Antarctica and scurvy and flight and infrastructure projects, and they're all incredibly well-researched and varied. What inspires you to take something on?

I can’t walk three steps without having a deep insight. I remember things better when I write about them, and I also enjoy long-windedly explaining things to people. So when I get particularly obsessed about a topic, it's fun for me to write it up.

You talk about algorithms, and the need for better reporting — but I also see a need for better coverage of numbers in general (You point this out more than a decade ago.) If you were going to design a curriculum for journalists to follow, what kinds of courses and skills would you want them to know? (And the all-important question: How does this then spread to smaller newsrooms where resources are even more strapped…?)

First off, journalists need to know how to do practical security. In conjunction with Tech Solidarity, I've been offering a 50-minute security briefing for working journalists, and I’m happy to offer it to any reporter, for free. People need to be safe.

If I could teach journalists three mathy things, they would be these:

1. Basic probability and statistics.

2. The concept of one-way functions and cryptographic signatures that is at the heart of secure messaging and e-commerce.

3. The basic concepts that underpin machine learning. I realize this sounds daunting, but I am an art major and absorbed this stuff.

We need better online explainers for this, and this is something the tech industry can help with. I’m hoping to get a deeper understanding of machine learning this year so I can write a decent, intellectually honest explainer for journalists and other interested people outside the field.

Output: Large technology companies, such as Google and Facebook may not be able to fully understand the sprawling algorithms which help search for news online. Such algorithms have become so large and complex that even with careful attention they may not be able to be tweaked to alleviate bugs and other issues. Large tech players are also facing criticism for claiming they have no editorial control despite being able to set the initial parameters of their search capabilities.


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India's Flipkart to start selling insurance coverage
 Flipkart to start selling insurance products in services push

Credit: Reuters

Homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart will sell insurance products on its platform, filings with the Registrar of Companies show.

Flipkart will initially sell products in general, life and health insurance and intends to later venture into other categories such as motor insurance as well, the filings state.

The company will launch this product after obtaining the regulatory approval from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. IRDA regulations allow Flipkart to tie-up with up to three insurers under each of insurance category. The e-commerce major will facilitate and provide end-to-end transactions (except underwriting) that include discovery, payment, delivery and after-sales services.

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However, the exact timeline of the launch was not specified as it is not clear whether the company has already obtained the regulatory approval. It could also not be ascertained whether Flipkart has already partnered with any insurance players.

Flipkart did not immediately respond to email queries from VCCircle, seeking more information about its foray into insurance.

In June this year, media reports stated that Flipkart was considering selling financial products and services online.

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Flipkart, which sees this line of business as a potential revenue spinner, is betting on its large customer base to expand the reach of the insurance products. Besides, it is also counting on its other capabilities such as its huge data mine of consumer insights, a differentiated value proposition to customers and its ability to deliver top-notch customer experience, Flipkart stated in the filings.

Flipkart is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to keep competition at bay with its deep-pocketed rival Amazon offering a range of diversified services, thanks to its $4 billion war chest that it amassed, courtesy of funding rounds from Japan’s SoftBank in August, and Microsoft, Tencent, and eBay in April.

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Flipkart is also reportedly developing a WeChat-like app, where it aims to become an aggregator of several services that will operate under a single platform.

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Output: Indian online retailer Flipkart is planning to offer insurance coverage. The retailer is awaiting regulatory approval, and will initially offer life, health and general insurance policies, while other lines may follow in the future. Flipkart will partner with three insurers for each line of coverage. A timeline for the launch of the offering has not yet been determined. Flipkart has amassed almost $4bn in funding, having garnered investment from Microsoft, eBay, SoftBank and Tencent.


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Coca-Cola and Gogglebox collaboration is most engaging Xmas ad
 A film showing the cast of Channel 4's Gogglebox reacting to Coca-Cola's much-anticipated and annual 'Holidays are Coming' ad was found to be the UK’s most engaging spot of the season, according to facial recognition data from Realeyes.

Coca Cola's Holidays Are Coming is the most engaging Christmas ad

The agency tested 55 of the top Christmas ads to see which ones evoked the most attention – and more importantly – emotion from viewers.

The twist on Coke's classic film, which showed families on their sofas chatting about the ad, trumped Vodafone, John Lewis and McDonald's to claim the crown.

The top ten spots were populated by the following brands.

1. Coca-Cola: Gogglebox on 'Holidays are coming'

2. Vodafone: 'A Christmas Love Story'

3. McDonald's: 'Carrot stick Christmas'

4. M&S: 'Paddington and the Christmas Visitor'

5. Currys/PC World: 'Merry Techmas'

6. H Samuel: 'Beautiful Christmas Gifts'

7. Waitrose: 'Christmas together'

8. Heathrow: 'Bears Christmas'

9.Pandora: 'Do Get What You Wish For'

10. Tesco: 'Turkey, Every Which Way'

Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, Tesco all opted for portraying typical household situations which Realeyes speculated found leverage due to audiences due to their “more honest insight into the real-life nature of Christmas”.

Mihkel Jäätma, chief executive of Realeyes, said: “Whilst the hype around Christmas ads has now become a national pastime, it’s sometimes forgotten that their job is to help sell more products and people’s emotional response plays a big part in where they decide to shop.

“This year saw advertisers trying to be more authentic by using real-life situations, humour and romance to relate to people, which could be seen as a way to cheer them up via universal themes after what’s been another divisive and turbulent year.”

John Lewis, and 'Moz the Monster' placed 17th after taking the crown in 2016 with 'Buster the Boxer'.

The study involved Realeyes measuring the emotional reactions of 3,300 people.

Output: Coca-Cola's Christmas advert has been judged the most engaging for viewers in a survey conducted using facial recognition technology. Research agency RealEyes used webcams to monitor the reaction of viewers to video content, which it then analysed. In the survey, the company showed 55 UK Christmas adverts to 3,300 people. The Coca-Cola video showing members of Channel 4's Gogglebox programme responding to the company's Holidays Are Coming ad was rated in first place for audience reaction, while Vodafone's Christmas Love Story came in second. John Lewis finished in 17th place, after winning last year.


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Boeing and China's Okay Airways finalise $1.4bn jet order
 Okay Airways, China's first privately owned airline, is seen at the terminal of Huanghua airport in the central Chinese city Changsha. The airline finalised an order for five Boeing Dreamliners. Photo: EPA

Output: Beijing-based Okay Airways, jointly privately owned by Boeing and China, has finalised a $1.4bn order for five 787-9 Dreamliner jets. China's aviation expansion is being spurred on by its growing middle class and tourism industry, and competition for international routes is intensifying between China's three main airlines, Air China, China Eastern and China Southern. Okay currently has 26 Boeing 737s in its fleet.


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TalkTalk Hundreds complain outage shuttered internet access
 TalkTalk Down: The home broadband provider appears to be suffering an outage

Update • 14:52 GMT

TalkTalk’s online service status checker does not acknowledge any problems with its home broadband – despite hundreds of complaints from customers online.

However, the TalkTalk’s official social media account (@TalkTalk on Twitter) is informing some users that it is “currently experiencing issues” in certain areas of the UK.

Replying to one disgruntled customer from Manchester, @TalkTalk tweeted: “Hi Jody, unfortunately we're currently experiencing issues there, we're working on getting this resolved now.”

It has also tweeted that it is “currently experiencing some issues with services in the North West.

“We're working on resolving this now, and we're sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

Asked when customers could expect the problems to be fixed, the account replied: “we don't have a time right now but the team are on the case and we hope to get it sorted asap.”

Original Story –

TalkTalk appears to be down for hundreds of customers across the UK.

Enraged TalkTalk home broadband customers have flooded social media to complain about the outage.

Output: TalkTalk's home broadband service suffered an outage, according to crowd-sourced data from independent website DownDetector. It has tracked social media posts related to the subject, saying the problem appeared most severe in London, Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham. TalkTalk's Twitter account acknowledged outages in parts of the country, apologised and said it was "working on resolving” the problem.


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Dazed boosts native ads engagement with website redesign
 Lifestyle and culture magazine Dazed redesigned its website this September with the goals of getting people to read more articles, making native ads more visible, and focusing on fewer, more effective display ads.

The redesign has increased time on site by 21 percent to two minutes and 19 seconds, according to the publisher. The article page was tweaked to show three related articles and one native ad, based on prior site behavior.

Dazed has served 5.7 million native ad impressions across the site in the last month, like this text-based article on portraits from citizens of Memphis in partnership eyewear brand Ace & Tate. These are co-created by the Dazed editorial team and the advertiser. According to the company, readers that come from its homepage (roughly 15 percent of all traffic, Dazed estimates) are spending on average seven minutes with its native ads, rather than roughly two minutes before the redesign.

Those changes were driven by advertising clients requesting more visibility for their native posts. Previously native ads were getting lost on the old homepage, which was an updated feed of the most-read articles, according to Bridget Mills-Powell, head of digital at Dazed.

Publishers are keen to keep people glued to their site, as time spent is proving a more attractive metric to advertisers than pageviews or video views. USA Today has redesigned its site around personalization to encourage readers to stick around, leading to a 75 percent increase in time spent per article.

As part of the redesign Dazed overhauled its display ads, scrapping ones that were “great for impressions but bad for viewability,” said Mills-Powell. Native ad revenue currently makes up half of Dazed’s digital revenue, with display advertising accounting for the other half, although Mills-Powell anticipates native will overtake display next year. Dazed introduced a bespoke header unit, which existing clients Hermes, Balenciaga and Gucci have used on campaigns. The latter had 1.66 percent click-through rate during the week the site went live, industry average click-through rates are woefully low at 0.35 percent, according to Google. As a result, viewability has also gone up by 20 percent, according to the company.

Most people won’t access Dazed by visiting its homepage, but those that do are its most loyal and engaged users. Since the redesign, the number of visitors to the homepage who go on to view three stories has increased by 34 percent and the number clicking on two stories has increased by 43 percent. Dazed doesn’t typically share absolute traffic numbers.

An internal core team of five have been working on the Dazed redesign for about two months. Dazed will keep A/B testing over the next few months, one avenue it’s looking at is how to tailor content to users based on referral, whether that’s social or search.

Image: courtesy of Dazed via Facebook.

Output: British media group Dazed has revealed its recent website overhaul has increased user dwell time by 21% to two minutes and 19 seconds, with visitors spending an estimated seven minutes reading its native ads, compared with two minutes before the redesign. The lifestyle and culture brand also said the number of homepage visitors who read three stories has risen by 34%, while the number of viewers clicking on two has gone up by 43%. Bridget Mills-Powell, the head of digital, said part of the revamp involved ditching ads that were "great for impressions but bad for viewability".


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German, Italian Amazon workers strike on busy Black Friday
 Amazon won't be enjoying Black Friday -- and the rest of the holiday season -- this year.

Over 500 workers at the e-commerce giant's main distribution hub in Italy have agreed to strike for the first time this Black Friday after disappointing talks with Amazon for bonuses and better pay, Reuters reported Wednesday. The plan follows strikes scheduled for the same day at six Amazon warehouses in Germany.

The strike is set to last the entire holiday season until Dec. 31 and expected to disrupt Amazon's busiest shopping season -- the company told the Financial Times it received more than a million orders last Black Friday. But it added that it remained committed to ensuring its customers receive their orders punctually during this period.

The number of orders Amazon receives on Black Friday may seem little compared to Alibaba's 1.48 billion shoppers this Singles' Day, but the online retailer still has to more than double its staff strength to cope with higher demand. Amazon employs 1,600 permanent staff at its Piacenza site in Northern Italy, but brings up its staff strength to 4,000 every year during the shopping season. The hub opened when Amazon launched its platform in Italy in 2010. Workers are paid a monthly average of 1,300 euros (about $1,541), according to FT.

In a statement, Amazon said its workers are among the highest paid in the logistics sector and enjoy benefits such as private medical insurance and training subsidies. But trade unions disagree.

"The world's biggest online retailer wants to achieve record sales on [Black Friday], but employees have to produce record performance not only on this day so that everything runs how Amazon wants it," Stefanie Nutzenberger, board member of a German trade union, told Reuters.

"We want a bonus because the company is having great results, and the profits need to be distributed," Gianluca Zilocchi, secretary of an Italian trade union told FT. "There's also a question of rights and a suffocating climate for workers."

CNET has reached out to Amazon for a comment.

Watch this: Shop for gifts on Amazon without giving away surprises 02:11

Rebooting the Reef: CNET dives deep into how tech can help save Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter.

Output: Amazon workers in Germany and Italy have gone on strike on Black Friday, one of the retailer's busiest days of the year, as their unions hold out for better bonuses and higher pay. Also, the 500 workers in Italy have said they will not do any overtime until 31 December, which may cause delays for customers. "We want a bonus because the company is having great results, and the profits need to be distributed," said trade unionist Gianluca Zilocchi. Workers at six German distribution centres are also striking on Black Friday, 24 November.


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Aviva fights gender inequality with shared parental leave
 The insurance company Aviva is offering equal parental leave for men and women, with six months’ pay across the board, in a move that is meant to eradicate career impediments for female staff.

Parents employed by Aviva will be offered the same benefit of up to a year’s leave, with 26 weeks of basic full pay “regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent”.

It opens the door for not only biological parents but those using a surrogate or opting for adoption.

“The new policy is part of Aviva’s strategy to create a diverse and inclusive working culture in which barriers to career progression are removed,” the company said.

The move has been hailed by unions for helping progress equality and diversity in the workplace. Andy Case, a regional officer for Unite, said: “Unite believes that the parental leave policy announced today is market leading and represents a significant and positive step forward for equality in the workplace.

“We are keen to hear our members’ comments on this positive initiative, which we will feed back to Aviva management as part of our ongoing dialogue on equality, diversity and inclusion.”

Aviva is launching the policy in a handful of locations, including the UK, Ireland, France, Singapore and Canada, for those employees who became parents on or after 19 November, before extending it to its other businesses within the next year.

However, it said the amount of time off and resulting pay could differ by country. UK staff will be offered up to 12 months off – half of which will be paid.

The policy will be available to any employee regardless of the amount of time they have worked at Aviva or how much they earn.

Part-time employees are also eligible, and there is no requirement to share leave between parents even if they both work for the insurer.

The Aviva chief executive, Mark Wilson, said: “I want to live in a world where the only criteria for success is someone’s talent, not their gender. Treating parents equally will help make this happen.

“We want Aviva to be a progressive, inclusive, welcoming place to work. It’s good for our people and it’s also good business sense.”

Output: Insurance company Aviva is to offer equal parental leave to men and women in a move designed to promote gender equality. The policy will also apply to part-time workers. In the UK, leave of up to a year will be offered, with 26 weeks of basic full pay available to staff “regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent”. The policy will initially be launched in a number of locations including the UK, Canada, France, Ireland and Singapore, for those who became parents on or after 19 November. It will be extended further next year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
US farmers use twice as many antibiotics as those in UK
 Fresh analysis published by the food and farming alliance Sustain today indicates that US farm antibiotic use is now more than twice as high per animal as it is in the UK. Data from the US Food and Drug Administration [1] shows that total sales of medically important antibiotics for use in animals increased by 26% between 2009 and 2015. By contrast, the UK government recently reported on a 27 per cent drop in use of antibiotics in animals reared on British farms over the last two years. [2]

American farmers and meat processors routinely use antibiotics, chlorine rinses and irradiation to reduce food-poisoning bugs in meat. However, health campaigners argue these carry their own risks and often mask poor welfare and hygiene standards on farms, in slaughterhouses and in meat processing. The World Health Organisation recently called on farmers and the food industry to stop routinely using antibiotics prophylactically in healthy animals. [3] This is to preserve the effectiveness for treatment of actual disease outbreaks in humans and animals.

Kath Dalmeny, Chief Executive of the Sustain food and farming alliance [4] said:

“When US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the CBI last week that the UK would have to accept US meat standards, I was horrified. Mass-produced American chicken may seem cheap, but it comes at a gigantic cost to our health, animals and workers.

“British food and farming industries have started to take action on the critically important issue of overuse of antibiotics in farming. We simply cannot afford to let our trade negotiators sweep such progress aside by flooding our market with cut-price US chicken raised with routine antibiotic use.

“If antibiotics lose their efficacy through over-use in medicine and farming, we will return to an era when millions of lives could be lost every year to simple infections. [5] All food and trade policy must reinforce international efforts to reduce antibiotic use, not create new markets for farmers – such as those in the US – who are using much more than they should.”

Cóilín Nunan, Scientific Adviser to the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics [6], said:

“We need to consider what pressure UK regulators will come under - and what farming practices we may be supporting internationally – as a result of international trade deals. Many European countries, including the UK, are starting to phase out routine preventative use and to significantly cut overall antibiotic use. There is even the real possibility of an EU-wide ban in routine preventative use in the next few years. In contrast, the United States still has no serious plans to deal with antibiotic abuse in farming, and use is increasing every year. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are no respecters of country borders. Rather than the UK adopting US standards, we need to call on the US to show some leadership on reducing the use of antibiotics in animals through improvements in production systems and animal husbandry. This is in everyone’s interests.”

The new comparison of farm antibiotic use data comes as the Government enters trade talks with the US, in which the Americans are expected to argue strongly in favour of the UK abandoning EU food standards in order to secure a speedy trade deal. [7] But a House of Lords report from July this year flagged that domestic producers fear the market being flooded with cheaper, lower welfare imports that will make it difficult for them to compete. [8]

ENDS. Media contact: Orla Delargy, Sustain; email: orla@sustainweb.org

Editor’s notes

[1] 2015 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals; US Food and Drug Administration Department of Health and Human Services, December 2016: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForIndustry/UserFees/AnimalDrugUserFeeActADUFA/UCM534243.pdf

[2] Press release: Record low for sales of antibiotics for use in animals, from: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Veterinary Medicines Directorate, and Department of Health. Published 27 October 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-low-for-sales-of-antibiotics-for-use-in-animals

[3] News release: Stop using antibiotics in healthy animals to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance, UN World Health Organization. Published 7 November 2017: http://who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/antibiotics-animals-effectiveness/en/

[4] Sustain representing about 100 national organisations working for better food, fishing and farming – to improve health, ethical food production, farming livelihoods and the environment: https://www.sustainweb.org

[5] Taken from conclusions of the UK’s Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, commissioned by the UK government and chaired by Jim O’Neill – see the 2016 report at: https://amr-review.org/

[6] The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics is an alliance of health, medical, civil society and animal welfare groups campaigning to stop the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming. It was founded by Compassion in World Farming, the Soil Association and Sustain in 2009, and is supported by the Jeremy Coller Foundation. The alliance’s vision is a world in which human and animal health and well-being are protected by food and farming systems that do not rely on routine antibiotic use: http://www.saveourantibiotics.org/

[7] US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said to the CBI on 6 November 2017: “Discussions with the private sector reveal that the removal of both tariff and non-tariff barriers will be a critical component of any trade discussions between us… we must reduce unnecessary divergences in regulations and standards that many of our companies, especially our SMEs, face.” See Guardian report, 6 November 2017, Trump adviser Ross says UK-US trade deal will mean scrapping EU rules: Commerce secretary’s comments suggest Britain will have to accept chlorinated chicken in post-Brexit agreement: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/06/trump-ross-says-uk-us-trade-deal-eu-brexit-chlorinated-chicken and CBI report at: http://www.cbi.org.uk/news/cbi2017-blog-wilbur-ross-speaks-at-the-cbi-annual-conference/

[8] House of Lords European Union Committee, 5th Report of Session 2017–19, HL Paper 15, Brexit: farm animal welfare, published 25 July 2017: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldeucom/15/15.pdf

Notes on data analysis

A rough comparison can be made between antibiotic use in US and UK livestock. In 2015, total sales of medically important antibiotics in the US was 9,702 tonnes whereas in the UK in 2016 it was 337 tonnes. So total US use was approximately 29 times higher than UK use in absolute terms. In terms of livestock populations, in 2015:

the US had 9.3 times more cattle

the US had 14.4 times more pigs

the US slaughtered 11.2 times more chickens (figures for the UK are for 2014)

the US had 6.2 times fewer sheep.

Since antibiotic use is known to be extremely low in sheep in comparison to other species, these figures suggest that US farm antibiotic use is more than twice as high per animal as it is in the UK.

Published 24 Nov 2017 Save Our Antibiotics: The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics is a coalition of health, medical, environmental and animal welfare groups campaigning to stop the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming. Press office

Output: US farmers could be using more than twice as many antibiotics per animal as those in the UK, according to research by food and farming group Sustain. The research has exacerbated fears that food standards in the UK would be undermined by a trade deal with the US after Brexit. Sustain said that sales of antibiotics for animals in the US have risen by 26% since 2009, compared with a 27% fall in the UK. Medical experts have called for an urgent reduction in the use of antibiotics in order to avoid the development of antibiotic resistance.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
HeyDoctor unveils app enabling doctors to text prescriptions
 Getting a prescription via text is a possibility.

San Francisco, California-based HeyDoctor has released a new telemedicine app that enables physicians to prescribe certain treatments through text messaging.

It works like this: Patients can download the app and click on the issue that fits their need. HeyDoctor currently offers a variety of services, including UTI testing, acne diagnosis, cold sore management, birth control, HIV testing, erectile dysfunction treatment, smoking cessation and more.

After answering a few questions about their condition, the patient’s needs are evaluated by a doctor, who prescribes proper treatment. Any medications needed can be sent via mail order or picked up at a pharmacy.

Patients don’t need health insurance to use the app. Instead, they can use a credit or debit card to pay for care. In a recent phone interview, HeyDoctor cofounder and CMO Brendan Levy said a service like UTI testing and treatment costs about $20.

Consultations are administered by HeyDoctor’s own in-house medical team of board-certified physicians.

Levy, a family medicine doctor, said the company’s origins stem from his interest in making it easier for physicians to connect with patients. At the beginning of 2017, he and Rohit Malhotra founded HeyDoctor to fulfill that goal and help people get low-acuity primary care online.

Currently, the startup is pursuing a direct-to-consumer business model. Going forward, Levy noted that HeyDoctor may also partner with health systems to provide ongoing care to specific patient populations.

“You could follow up on our platform [and] have better results and lower costs,” he said.

To ensure it’s keeping patients’ information safe, Levy said HeyDoctor utilizes encryption technologies and security consultants.

“We think that security’s obviously paramount,” he noted.

Currently, the app is available in 19 states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Within the next three months, it plans to expand to 10 more: Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

In addition to expanding geographically, Levy said HeyDoctor also wants to increase the number of services it offers.

Overall, one of the key benefits of the startup’s technology is that it enables patients to follow up with the same provider fairly quickly after the initial diagnosis.

“In this case, it’s nice because you have an ongoing chat relationship,” Levy said.

HeyDoctor isn’t the only company taking advantage of texting capabilities. Earlier this year, Austin, Texas-based Medici launched as a messaging app that allows patients to text all their doctors — including their physician, dentist, therapist and veterinarian — from a single platform.

Photo: diego_cervo, Getty Images

Output: Medical technology start-up HeyDoctor has launched a telemedicine app enabling doctors to prescribe treatments for some conditions via text message. Patients can be referred for services including urinary tract infection treatment, cold sore and acne management, HIV testing and birth control provision. Once a prescription has been given, medication can be ordered via mail or collected at a pharmacy. Payment is made through the app rather than via an insurer. HeyDoctor has an in-house medical team of doctors to evaluate patients' needs through it may in future work with health systems.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Algae microbots may enable internal drugs delivery and diagnoses
 Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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Scientists have developed tiny, remote-controlled “microrobots” with the ability to release cancer-targeting drugs, which they hope will one day be used to diagnose disease and administer drugs inside the human body.

Known as “biohybrids”, they are biological cells with useful engineered features added on, namely magnetic particles that allow them to be guided around the body.

But despite their highly technical capability, the robots are made from spirulina algae, a product more recognisable as a health food product than a construction material.

“Rather than fabricate a functional microrobot from scratch using intricate laboratory techniques and processes, we set out to directly engineer smart materials in nature,” said Professor Li Zhang, an engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who contributed to the Science Robotics study.

As a result they were able to make use of the algae’s intrinsic properties.

“For instance, because these biohybrid bots have a naturally fluorescent biological interior and magnetic iron-oxide exterior, we can track and actuate a swarm of those agents inside the body quite easily using fluorescence imaging and magnetic resonance imaging,” said Professor Zhang

This meant the scientists were able to control the robots remotely using magnetism as they moved them to sites in the stomachs of rats.

The devices also released cancer-fighting compounds as they degraded, meaning they could have the potential to treat disease.

“Creating robotic systems which can be propelled and guided in the body has been and still is a holy grail in the field of delivery system engineering,” said nanomedicine researcher Professor Kostas Kostarelos, another team member from the University of Manchester.

The robots are also able to sense changes in the body associated with the onset of illness, an ability that could make them useful tools for diagnosis.

Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 / 20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify “dangerous” humans from listening to each other’s warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or “contact calls” (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the “Goldilocks Zone” which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planet’s oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a “transient anus” that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Müller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the “interstitium”. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs José Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary

It’s still early days for the robots. Rigorous tests need to be undertaken to ensure that having been inserted into the body, they either degrade naturally without leaving any harmful substances, or else they can be removed or excreted after finishing their work.

One of the key points about this work, said Professor Kostarelos, is that it represents the first example of how such robots could degrade naturally.

The iron magnetic coating helps fine-tune the rate at which the bots degrade in the body.

The real potential of these bots, according to Professor Kostarelos, lies in the potential to navigate them towards “hard-to-reach cavities of the human body” where they can treat or diagnose disease without the need for more invasive methods.

Output: Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers have helped create "biohybrid" remote-controlled "micro-robots" that could be produced to carry and release cancer-battling drugs within the human body. The bots are composed of spirulina algae cells fitted with magnetic particles that enable operators to direct them around the body. Their natural fluorescence makes them detectable using imaging techniques and they naturally release cancer-fighting chemicals as they degrade, making them a potential method of delivering drugs. Their ability to react to changes in the body in the presence of illness also makes them possible disease detectors.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Tech firms turn to public spaces as new source of consumer data
 A great deal has been written about privately owned public space, or POPS. A Guardian investigation earlier this year revealed the proliferation of “pseudo-public spaces”. Tales of people being watched, removed from or told off in POPS have spread online. Activists have taken to monitoring POPS, and politicians on both sides of the pond are calling for reforms in how they are run.

Local authorities’ motives for selling off public spaces are normally simple: getting companies to buy and maintain public space saves precious public pounds. Less straightforward and often overlooked in this debate is why – given the maintenance costs, public safety concerns and increasingly unflattering media attention – developers would actually want to own public space in the first place.

To answer that question it’s important to note that POPS can’t be viewed as isolated places, like parks or other public spaces might be. For the companies that own them, public spaces are bound up in the business that takes place inside their private buildings; POPS are tools that allow them, in one way or another, to boost profits.

Trade-offs

In some cities, such as Hong Kong and New York, ownership of public space is a trade-off for the right to bend the rules in planning and zoning. In 1961 New York introduced a policy that came to be known as ‘incentive zoning’. Developers who took on the provision of some public space could build wider, taller buildings, ignoring restrictions that had previously required staggered vertical growth to let sunlight and air into streets.

Since then, the city has allowed developers to build 20m square feet of private space in exchange for 80 acres of POPS, or 525 individual spaces, according to watchdog Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space (APOPS).

Several of those spaces lie in Trump Tower. Before the King of the Deal began construction on his new headquarters in 1979, he secured a pretty good deal with the city: Trump Tower would provide two atriums, two gardens, some restrooms and some benches for public use; in exchange 20 floors could be added to the top of the skyscraper. That’s quite a lot of condos.

Shockingly, the current president has not always kept up his end of the bargain and has been fined multiple times for dissuading members of the public from using POPS by doing things like placing flower pots on top of benches – violating a 1975 rule which said that companies had to provide amenities that actually make public spaces useable. The incident might suggest the failure of the ‘honour system’ under which POPS operate day-to-day. Once developers have secured their extra square footage, they might be tempted to undermine, subtly, the ‘public’ nature of their public spaces.

But what about where there aren’t necessarily planning benefits to providing public space? Why would companies go to the trouble of managing spaces that the council would otherwise take care of?

Attracting the ‘right sort’

Granary Square, part of the £5bn redevelopment of London’s Kings Cross, has been open since 2012. It is one of Europe’s largest privately-owned public spaces and has become a focal point for concerns over corporate control of public space. Yet developers of the neighbouring Coal Drop Yards site, due to open in October 2018, are also making their “dynamic new public space” a key point in marketing.

Cushman Wakefield, the real estate company in charge of Coal Drops Yard, says that the vision of the developers, Argent, has been to “retain the historical architecture to create a dramatic environment that will attract visitors to the 100,000 square feet of boutiques”. The key word here is “attract”. By designing and managing POPS, developers can attract the consumers who are essential to the success of their sites and who might be put off by a grubby council-managed square – or by a sterile shopping mall door.

A 2011 London Assembly Report found that the expansion of Canary Wharf in the 1990s was a turning point for developers who now “assume that they themselves will take ownership of an open space, with absolute control, in order to protect the value of the development as a whole”. In many ways this is a win-win situation; who doesn’t appreciate a nice water feature or shrub or whatever else big developer money can buy?

The caveat is, as academic Tridib Banerjee pointed out back in 2001: “The public is welcome as long as they are patrons of shops and restaurants, office workers, or clients of businesses located on the premises. But access to and use of the space is only a privilege and not a right” – hence the stories of security guards removing protesters or homeless people who threaten the aspirational appeal of places like Granary Square.

In the US, developers have taken this kind of space-curation even further, using public spaces as part of their formula for attracting the right kind of worker, as well as consumer, for nearby businesses. In Cincinnati, developer 3CDC transformed the notoriously crime-ridden Over-The-Rhine (OTR) neighbourhood into a young professional paradise. Pouring $47m into an initial make-over in 2010, 3CDC beautified parks and public space as well as private buildings.

To do so, the firm received $50 million in funding from corporations like Procter and Gamble, whose Cincinnati headquarters sits to the South-West of OTR. This kind of hyper-gentrification has profoundly change the demographics of the neighbourhood – to the anger of many long-term residents – attracting, essentially, the kind of people who work at Procter and Gamble.

Elsewhere, in cities like Alpharetta, Georgia, 3CDC have taken their public space management even further, running events and entertainment designed to attract productive young people to otherwise dull neighbourhoods.

Data pools

The proposed partnership between the city of Toronto and Sidewalk Labs (owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet) has highlighted another motive for companies to own public space: the most modern of all resources, data.

Data collection is at the heart of the ‘smart city’ utopia: the idea that by turning public spaces and the people into them into a vast data pool, tech companies can find ways to improve transport, the environment and urban quality of life. If approved next year, Sidewalk would take over the mostly derelict east waterfront area, developing public and private space filled with sensors.

Of course, this isn’t altruism. The Globe and Mail describe Sidewalk’s desired role as “the private garbage collectors of data”. It’s an apt phrase that reflects the merging of public service and private opportunity in Toronto’s future public space.

The data that Sidewalk could collect in Toronto would be used by Google in its commercial projects. Indeed, they’ve already done so in New York’s LinkNYC and London’s LinkUK. Kiosks installed around the cities provide the public with wifi and charging points, whilst monitoring traffic and pedestrians and generating data to feed into Google Maps.

The subway station at Hudson Yards, New York City. Image: Getty.

This is all pretty anodyne stuff. Data on how we move around public spaces is probably a small price to pay for more efficient transport information, and of course Sidewalk don’t own the areas around their Link Kiosks. But elsewhere companies’ plans to collect data in their POPS have sparked controversy. In New York’s Hudson Yards development – which Sidewalk also has a stake in – ambiguity over how visitors and residents can opt out of sharing their data when in its public square, have raised concerns over privacy.

In Toronto, Sidewalk have already offered to share their data with the city. However, Martin Kenney, researcher at the University of California at Davis and co-author of 2016’s ‘The Rise of the Platform Economy’, has warned that the potential value of a tech company collecting a community’s data should not be underestimated. “What’s really important is the deals Toronto cuts with Sidewalk may set terms and conditions for the rest of the world,” he said after the announcement in October.

The project could crystallise all three motives behind the ownership of POPS. Alongside data collection, Sidewalk will likely have some leeway over planning regulations and will certainly tailor its public spaces to its ideal workers and consumers – Google have already announced that it would move its Canadian headquarters, from their current location in Downton Toronto, into the first pilot phase of the development.

Even if the Sidewalks Lab project never happens, the motives behind companies’ ownership of POPS tell us that cities’ public realms are of increasing interest to private hands.

Want more of this stuff? Follow CityMetric on Twitter or Facebook.

Output: Private corporations are looking to exploit the potential for data mining in privately managed public spaces. Developers are taking on the ownership and management of public spaces in deals with local authorities that offer benefits for both sides. In return for providing and maintaining public facilities, companies can gain planning concessions that enhance the value of their developments. In one example, Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs is working with Toronto on a privately owned public space initiative, where it would fill a currently derelict waterfront area with sensors that would gather data that Google could use across its businesses.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Lyft looks for another $500m on top of $1bn already raised
 Uber rival Lyft is raising an additional $500 million in funding ion its ongoinjg battle with Uber, according to a U.S. share authorization document filed in Delaware.

The additional funding round, led by Alphabet's CapitalG, is an extension of the $1 billion round announced in October.

Lyft spokesman Adrian Durbin, confirming the funding round, in an e-mailed statement said, 'Increasing the potential for this round will allow us to further accelerate our commitment to serving passengers and drivers.'

Scroll down for video

The additional funding round, led by Alphabet's CapitalG, is an extension of a $1 billion round announced in October, and raises the firm's valuation to $11.5 billion

Axios was first to report the news.

In October Lyft had said that the previous round of funding boosted its valuation to $11 billion from $7.5 billion.

The fresh funding would raise its valuation to $11.5 billion.

It comes a day after Lyft secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, taking it one step further in the race with several other companies to bring self-driving cars to the masses.

Lyft's permit, reflected on the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) website, comes two months after it announced plans to offer a self-driving car as a ride option in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lyft already has partnerships in place with autonomous car companies to advance its self-driving strategy.

Ride-hailing firm Lyft Inc said on Monday it would launch its service in Toronto, marking the first international expansion for the U.S.-based rival of Uber Technologies Inc. A stock image is pictured

FORD'S SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES Ford self-driving test vehicles will be connected to Lyft's network, but at first, customers will not be able to use them, according to Sherif Marakby, Ford's vice president for autonomous vehicles and electrification. The firm will initially put human-driven vehicles on Lyft's network, and it is unclear when the first self-driving cars will hit roads. Ford is also testing delivery services using self-driving vehicles and a van shuttle service. The self-driving vehicles Ford will deploy through Lyft will use software developed by Argo AI, Advertisement !- - ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/ru/sciencetech/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 - ->

The firm struck a research collaboration earlier this year with Alphabet unit Waymo.

It has also secured deals with Ford Motor Co and startup Nutonomy to incorporate self-driving cars in its fleet.

Earlier this year, Lyft joined forces with Ford to deploy self-driving vehicles in 'large numbers' by 2021.

Ford and Lyft teams will begin working together to design software to allow Ford vehicles to communicate with Lyft's smartphone apps.

Ford will initially put human-driven vehicles on Lyft's network, and it is unclear when the first self-driving cars will hit roads.

Ford self-driving test vehicles will be connected to Lyft's network, but at first, customers will not be able to use them, according to Sherif Marakby, Ford's vice president for autonomous vehicles and electrification.

'We're not building prototypes for the sake of building prototypes,' Mr Marakby said, adding Ford intends to ultimately put thousands of self-driving vehicles in use.

Ford's new Chief Executive Jim Hackett is scheduled to meet with investors next weel to outline the automaker's strategy for boosting profitability.

Lyft co-founder John Zimmer displays his company's 'glowstache' following a launch event in San Francisco.

Mr Hackett's plans to compete for revenue from mobility services, which include car sharing and ride-hailing, will be one area of focus for investors.

The Lyft partnership fills in a piece of the puzzle.

Ford is also testing delivery services using self-driving vehicles and a van shuttle service.

The self-driving vehicles Ford will deploy through Lyft will use software developed by Argo AI, a company in which Ford is investing $1 billion (£746 million) over the next five years.

Lyft's chief rival Uber secured the California permit to test self-driving cars in March. Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics, Tesla Inc and a host of automakers also have the permit.

Output: The US ride-hailing service Lyft has extended its latest investment round with the aim of raising an additional $500m in capital, it has announced. The move came after Google parent company Alphabet put in $1bn through its venture capital division CapitalG in October. The company has added 100 new markets during 2017, bringing its coverage to 95% of the US population. The extra investment will support its planned expansion into Canada before the end of the year, and the development of its autonomous vehicle testing programme in California.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Hippeas looks to launch its own e-commerce site to avoid Amazon
 Chickpea snack brand Hippeas has gone from zero to making a million dollars a month in revenue in less than two years. While Amazon orders have fueled those sales, the startup wants to keep the retailer at arm’s length by launching its own e-commerce site.

The site is expected in 2018. Selling directly to shoppers is a priority for Hippeas, with founder Livio Bisterzo fearing the momentum behind the business will fade if it doesn’t sidestep retailers. On its current sales trajectory, which puts the business at £7.5 million ($10 million) this year and £18.8 million ($25 million) the next, Hippeas is projected to make £100 million ($132.8 million) in sales by 2022.

It will take longer to hit those numbers without going directly to customers, said Bisterzo, who also sees the move as a chance to be less reliant on Amazon. While Starbucks is Hippeas’ biggest distribution channel, orders from Hippeas’ Amazon store are forecast to hit $3.5 million next year. Although Bisterzo is grateful for both the visibility and increased sales that come with selling on Amazon, he views it as a frenemy.

Having an e-commerce site is important because Hippeas can “fully curate” the experience, which you can’t do on Amazon, he explained. Bisterzo wants control of the type of customer data that Amazon possesses. The online behemoth’s reluctance to share shopper data has long been a point of contention for retailers on the site, many of whom have no choice but to accept the situation or risk losing revenue by not being on a site that e-commerce research firm Slice Intelligence said accounted for 43 percent of all online revenue in the U.S. last year.

While Hippeas’ sales are exponentially growing on Amazon, the site itself is not a marketing tool but a transactional one, said Debbie Ellison, head of digital at Geometry. She pointed to Graze, a U.K.-based snack brand that expanded through a direct-to-consumer relationship, as an example of how Hippeas wants to use shopper data to develop new products and drop products that don’t work.

“If Amazon holds stock and fulfills orders, this model cannot work,” Ellison said. “It makes sense that Hippeas launches its own e-commerce site to further connect emotionally with their shoppers to drive purchase and product innovation.”

Selling directly to consumers also means Hippeas can see what ads drive sales, said Bisterzo. It’s difficult to spend “big money” on online ads without having a platform that you can “clearly see a direct return” from, he added. “We would argue that some of our Amazon traffic is driven by our campaigns, but there’s no direct correlation when it comes to understanding what works and what doesn’t,” he continued. “By having a [business-to-consumer] site, we can genuinely start to understand how meaningful our online spend is.”

Once the site launches, Bisterzo said more of its ads, which appear mainly on Facebook and Instagram, would encourage people to visit with calls to action.

Bisterzo acknowledges that going directly to consumers will be easier said than done. Larger and richer companies such as Diageo, Mondelēz and Heineken have struggled with e-commerce. Yet unlike those companies, Hippeas isn’t a legacy business with retailer commitments to appease and deep-rooted customer behaviors to change. “I don’t see many consumers buying cases of Pepsi from Pepsi.com,” Bisterzo explained.

For all the talk of selling directly to customers, Hippeas won’t abandon Amazon anytime soon. Hippeas has invested in Amazon to the point where it now has a dedicated member of its team managing its vendor profile on the e-commerce site. Hippeas began as a seller in the Amazon Launchpad program for startups before transitioning to Amazon’s Vendor Central, in which it sold in bulk to Amazon rather than directly to customers on the site. In the summer, Hippeas set up its own shop on Amazon, selling directly to customers, which is a “game-changer” for the business, Bisterzo said.

“The big challenge has been becoming a meaningful vendor on Amazon, which we were able to do by driving traffic through some of our campaigns,” Bisterzo said. “The beauty of working with Amazon is that you have live data and analytics that you can learn from.”

Output: Chickpeas snack maker Hippeas is looking to wean itself off Amazon and sell direct to online customers. CEO Livio Bisterzo sees the move as key to maintaining sales momentum that has the company forecasting revenue of $25m next year and $133m by 2022. Bisterzo wants access to Hippea's customer data, which Amazon doesn't share. “By having a B2C site, we can genuinely start to understand how meaningful our online spend is,” Bisterzo said.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Facebook, Instagram tout 540 million fans to World Cup marketers
 With the world’s most popular sporting tournament taking place next summer, Facebook and Instagram are leveraging their massive popularity among football fans to provide marketers and advertisers with opportunities to score…

On 14 June, 2018, the most famous sporting tournament on the planet, the FIFA World Cup, will kick-off for the twenty-first time, with Russia as host. While 32 teams battle it out on the pitch, millions of football fans around the world will share their love for the game on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook has more than 400m football fans as users, while Instagram, which joined the Facebook family in 2012, offers more than 140m. Football, in fact, is by far the most popular sport on both platforms, with three times more followers than the next most popular sport, basketball. Facebook’s director of comms planning in Northern Europe, Ian Edwards, believes that this level of engagement offers unrivalled opportunities for marketers.

“In 2014, 350m people produced over 3bn interactions with World Cup content on Facebook, more engagement than any other event in the platform’s history,” says Edwards. “Bearing in mind that Instagram was a young player last time round, this year’s tournament is set to be even more massive across both platforms. For marketers, the potential is huge.”

Big match, small screen

Edwards believes that to successfully engage football fans, online marketers need to understand the consumer trends shaping the way we experience football.

“Sport is no longer something that only happens in a stadium or on television. It’s happening across multiple screens, with 90% of sports fans saying they use a mobile device while watching games. What’s more, our data shows that mobile usage of Facebook increases during the commercial breaks of major TV shows and football matches.

“Mobile phones have also created a 24/7 appetite for football content online. When we analysed football conversation over an average month during the regular football season we saw 1.6bn interactions with football-related content. Factor a global football tournament World Cup into the equation and you can imagine how those numbers will skyrocket.”

Edwards points to how mobile has also created new ways for fans to interact with their heroes, with players offering privileged access to their off-field lives through Instagram and Facebook.

“94% of sports fans on Instagram use the platform to see the personal side of athletes. This kind of authenticity is especially important to millennial and Generation Z fans.”

The rise in mobile has, of course, also led to an explosion in video consumption. Three times more video was uploaded to Facebook in 2016 compared to 2015, while sports fans on Instagram watch twice as much video as non-fans. During Euro 2016, there were nearly 1bn views for videos related to the tournament.

Edwards says: “People spend five times as long looking at moving versus static imagery on Facebook. Not using video as the centre of your sporting campaigns on Facebook and Instagram would be a little like buying TV time during the Christmas period and then running a static image.

“Considered together, these trends point the way forward for marketers hoping to leverage the power of social media around next year’s tournament.”

Three new global communities

While football fans are a diverse bunch, Facebook has discovered three distinct personalities among the hundreds of millions of fans on their platforms. As you would expect, each of these personas has different needs and expectations and respond to different creative approaches. “It’s important to consider the different types of fans drawn to such a massive global event,” says Edwards.

The first of these, Match Maniacs, are “predominantly young men whose lives revolve around football,” says Edwards. “They revel in rivalries with friends and are twice as likely to report watching a sports match than the general population.” There are 103 million Match Maniac on Facebook and Instagram, with especially high numbers across EMEA in Italy, the UK, Germany, France and Spain.

The second grouping is Homeland Heroes: moderately engaged fans who regard supporting their national team as part of their identity, particularly around big games. Homeland Heroes are more evenly split between male and female than Match Maniacs, and tend to be more family-oriented. There are 160m Homeland Heroes on Facebook and Instagram, with the largest numbers in Egypt and Italy, across EMEA.

The third type of fan, Social Supporters, are always looking for cool ways to show their influence and join in the fun. “These friends of fans are mostly female and love the energy of the event rather than the details of the match. They are 1.6 times more likely to discuss food or drinks in their posts as they organise social events around sporting events World Cup and, crucially, are at least twice as likely to buy consumer packaged goods online,” says Edwards. There are 307 million Social Supporters on Facebook and Instagram, with the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Egypt all ranking highly.

Edwards says: “Facebook and Instagram are constantly creating new tools to help brands tell great stories to different audiences. We offer immersive 360 Video, Instagram Stories (created by 300m people every day), and Facebook Live, which lets any brand become a broadcaster on mobile.

“With all these new formats, we recognise that creating video for mobile be a challenge. Brands have had six decades to learn the rules for television, but mobile is still in its infancy. At the same time, that means there’s a huge opportunity to experiment and innovate. To help brands know what great creative looks like on mobile, we’ve created an interactive gallery on Facebook’s Creative Hub that offers examples and lets them mock-up their own Facebook and Instagram creative.”

For marketers hoping to target football fans, it looks like the goal is wide open.

Output: Facebook and Instagram hope to attract marketers and advertisers to engage with their combined 540 million football-fan users during the 2018 World Cup. The platforms are poised to overtake the three billion World Cup-related interactions they hosted during the 2014 finals. "This year’s tournament is set to be even more massive across both platforms," said Ian Edwards, Facebook head of communications for Europe. "For marketers, the potential is huge.”


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
The New York Times grows by selling custom ads programmatically
 The New York Times is growing its programmatic business by allowing machines to sell its custom ad units.

In the third quarter, the Times began selling its custom Flex Frame ads programmatically, which helped it double its programmatic direct revenue over the previous quarter, said Sara Badler, director of programmatic advertising at the Times, declining to share precise figures. Over the past 12 months, the Times also doubled its number of programmatic staffers from three to six, expanded its programmatic sales internationally and opened all of its ad products, including homepage and video ads, to programmatic buying.

While the Times’ business model has shifted toward a renewed emphasis on subscriptions — its CEO Mark Thompson believes the paper can get 10 million subscribers, and its digital subscription revenue rose 46 percent year over year to $86 million in the third quarter — it reported that it raked in $49 million in digital ad revenue in the third quarter. To prevent its ad business from becoming stale, the Times is opening its ad products to programmatic in response to buyers increasingly pushing their dollars through automated channels.

“Clients want to do cooler things programmatically,” Badler said. “It’s not just about banner ads anymore.”

Open exchanges still account for more than half of the Times’ annual programmatic ad revenue, but the percentage is shrinking as the Times’ programmatic direct business grows, said Badler, declining to provide specific percentages. The line items on the Times’ ads.txt file indicate that Google and the Facebook Audience Network sell much of the Times’ open market inventory.

But the Times keeps its video ads and custom units sheltered from open exchanges, where ad rates tend to be lower and publishers have less control over what brands will wind up on their site. For example, programmatic advertisers who buy its proprietary Flex Frame ads — which dynamically adjust size to fit a user’s screen — have to set up a programmatic guaranteed deal, in which publishers and buyers agree to a fixed price and inventory commitment before the transaction occurs. About 20 brands have purchased Flex Frames this way, Badler said.

Compared to the open exchange, programmatic guaranteed gives publishers better control over their inventory and allows them to charge a premium. For about a year, the Times has used Google’s programmatic guaranteed product whenever buyers want to set up a deal outside of the open exchange so that they can layer on their own first-party data for audience targeting.

Michael Stoeckel, vp of global tech strategy at Prohaska Consulting, said most publishers still reserve their custom ad units for direct sales since programmatic has a reputation for being low-price and commoditized. Even in 2017, some publisher execs at legacy media companies say direct salespeople view programmatic as a boogeyman that cannibalizes sales.

But selling custom units and proprietary audience data has become more common in private marketplaces as publishers package together deals to get higher CPMs than the open market, Stoeckel said. USA Today and CafeMedia sell custom ads programmatically, according to company spokespeople. Even Snapchat, which built its ad business around custom units, has opened up to programmatic.

Chris Wexler, executive director of media and analytics at ad agency Cramer-Krasselt, said the Times selling custom units programmatically is indicative of a broader shift in the industry. Wexler said programmatic is finally beginning to shift from “just a way to clear remnant banner inventory to a core mechanism that will power the future of most media transactions.”

Output: The New York Times is offering direct programmatic purchases for its custom Flex Frame ad units, doubling revenue between Q2 and Q3 2017 to reach $49m. The Times has increased its programmatic staffers from three to six in the past year, and extended its programmatic sales globally. The entirety of its ad product range is now available through programmatic buying. Half of the Times' annual programmatic ad revenue still relies on open exchanges, though this is being reduced.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Stamp duty cut will stoke prices for first-time homebuyers: OBR
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The scrapping of stamp duty for first-time buyers will leave them paying more for their homes than the saving made because it will ramp up prices, the Treasury auditor has said.

The biggest winners will be existing homeowners – rather than people struggling to get on the housing ladder – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned.

Just 3,500 additional homes would be bought each year because of the headline-grabbing Budget measure, expected to cost about £3.2bn by 2022-23.

And it was open to “abuse”, with couples tempted to put a purchase in the name of whoever was a first-time buyer, the OBR suggested.

The head of the Resolution Foundation think tank suggested it meant the cost to the public purse would be a cool £900,000 for each extra first time buyer.

“It would be much cheaper to literally build them a house each,” said Torsten Bell, its director.

In his Budget “rabbit”, Philip Hammond announced that stamp duty will be scrapped immediately for first-time buyers of homes below £300,000.

In London and other property hotspots, it will be axed on the first £300,000 of a purchase price up to £500,000 – representing a cut of up to £5,000.

The Chancellor said that the move would slash the tax for 95 per cent of first-time buyers and abolish it altogether for 80 per cent of them.

But, asked by The Independent if the increase in house prices sparked by the abolition of stamp duty would be greater than the saving made, the OBR’s chairman Robert Chote replied: “Yes.”

He said first-time buyers would still feel the were benefiting, if they were able to buy a home they otherwise would be denied.

But, he added: “Those houses will be more expensive.”

While some initially cheered the move, personal-finance experts slammed it as a token measure and one that’s unlikely to offer significant relief to savers trying to buy their own home.

“While welcome, abolishing stamp duty is a drop in the ocean given the affordability challenge of getting Generation Rent onto the property ladder,” said Simon Heawood, chief executive and founder of property investment site Bricklane.com.

“The focus on bridging the housing generational gap must lie on the all-important first rung of the ladder – saving up for a deposit. The issue of housing supply and price is important, but looking at measures to support Generation Rent’s ability to get together a deposit is crucial,” he added.

House prices have surged in recent years, barring many from being able to buy, especially as wage growth has stagnated.

The most recently available official data shows that annual house-price growth across the UK stood at 5.4 per cent in September, up from 4.8 per cent in August.

The average UK house price was £226,000 during the month, marking a 0.4 per cent increase on the previous month.

Responding to Mr Hammond’s announcement, the OBR also said that the move would probably have the effect of driving house prices up even more – by around 0.3 per cent, with most of the increase happening in 2018.

Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, also responded critically to the news.

“The stamp duty holiday focused on first-time buyers sounds positive on paper but realistically, this will only help a very small number of people who have already been able to save enough for a deposit,” she said.

“For most young people, home ownership has become a pipe dream and the high cost of rents has made it difficult for them to save.”

Separately on Wednesday, Mr Hammond promised a wide-ranging spending package to boost housebuilding. He set a target of an annual 300,000 homes built by the middle of the next decade.

Higher capital funding, loans and guarantees, plus measures to boost the supply of skills, resources and land, would add up to £44bn, he said.

And the Chancellor adopted another Labour policy, with a threat of what have been dubbed “use-it-or-lose-it” powers to target developers who hoard land but refuse to build.

Big developers have repeatedly been accused of exercising an iron grip on the pace of housebuilding, with no commercial incentive to build faster unless prices are on the rise.

But they have resolutely rejected accusations of land-hoarding, insisting delays are often caused by a cumbersome planning system and failures by local-authority planners.

New cash set aside for housebuilding will include a £630m small-sites fund, £2.7bn to more than double the Housing Infrastructure Fund, £400m for estate regeneration, £8bn of new financial guarantees to support private housebuilding and an additional £34m to develop construction skills, Mr Hammond said.

He defended the Government’s housebuilding record, claiming 1.1 million homes had been built since 2010, of which 350,000 were “affordable”, but also warned that the proportion of young homeowners had plunged from 59 per cent of young people to just 38 per cent over 13 years.

“We need to do better still if we are to see affordability improved,” he said.

Output: UK house prices could rise by around 0.3% following Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond's decision to axe stamp duty on homes sales of less than £300,000, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Hammond said the cut would help first-time buyers onto the property ladder. Financial experts criticised the measure, saying it would benefit only those who had saved up a 5% deposit to buy a house and it would do nothing for a generation that could only afford to rent a home. The average house price in the UK is £226,000 ($301,800) after rising 5.4% in September, up from 4.8% in August.