The Markup

Is the patient Black? Check this box for yes

As of publication, no database tracks the number of Black patients who died before getting on the kidney transplant waitlist ...
The Markup

It’s hard to find resources while on the transplant list. These sites want to change that

It can be challenging to find the right sort of help when you’re sick and navigating a complicated health care system. And if you need an organ transplant, that challenge can be even more daunting.
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Are Your Country’s Cellphone Plans a Rip-off?

We’ve all experienced slow and inconsistent mobile data connections—speed varies with topography and proximity to cellphone towers, making it hard to measure. We used data from a 2016 FCC study that ...
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Matt McVickar

Full-stack EngineerMatt McVickar is a full-stack engineer at CalMatters and The Markup. Matt comes to CalMatters from a career in client and agency work, with nearly two decades in website and ...
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The NYC Algorithm Deciding Which Families Are Under Watch for Child Abuse

The Markup, now a part of CalMatters, uses investigative reporting, data analysis, and software engineering to challenge technology to serve the public good. Sign up for Klaxon, a newsletter that ...
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Split Screen: How Different Are Americans’ Facebook Feeds?

Facebook’s recommendation algorithm shows different news, groups, and hashtags to different users. But who sees what? Split Screen attempts to answer that question with real world data collected ...
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Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites

A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s ...
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See the Neighborhoods Internet Providers Excluded from Fast Internet

Sources The Markup analysis of a 10 percent random sample of addresses served by AT&T, CenturyLink, and Verizon in each city; U.S. Census Bureau, Mapping Inequality Speed of base internet offer at $55 ...
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Axon’s Ethics Board Resigned Over Taser-Armed Drones. Then the Company Bought a Military Drone Maker

This article was co-published with WIRED. Less than 10 days after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, late last May, Axon Enterprises CEO Rick Smith announced the company had ...
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Dozens of Mortgage Lenders Showed Significant Disparities. Here Are the Worst

For years, research and reporting has found that mortgage lenders overall deny people of color more often than White applicants. The industry’s longtime argument is that the lending gap can be ...
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False Alarm: How Wisconsin Uses Race and Income to Label Students “High Risk”

This story was copublished with Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering public education. Sign up for its newsletters here. Last summer, administrators at Bradford High School in Kenosha, ...
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Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them

A satellite image of Plainfield, New Jersey with the city boundaries outlined. In 2018, police in the city of Plainfield, N.J., started using software called PredPol to predict where crime would ...