Washingtonpost.com: “When it comes to sensitive information, the eyes have it. That became apparent last week, when a man allegedly stalked a Japanese pop star after determining her location based on reflections seen in her eyes in social media posts, according to the Associated Press. Those images helped the suspect find her train station. He… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: October 2019
Using Old Cellphones to Listen for Illegal Loggers
The New York Times -“This village in West Sumatra, a lush province of volcanoes and hilly rain forests, had a problem with illegal loggers. They were stealing valuable hardwood with impunity. At first, a group of local people put a fence across the main road leading into the forest, but it was flimsy and proved… Continue Reading
The US military is trying to read minds
MIT Technology Review – A new DARPA research program is developing brain-computer interfaces that could control “swarms of drones, operating at the speed of thought”. What if it succeeds? – “In August, three graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University were crammed together in a small, windowless basement lab, using a jury-rigged 3D printer frame to zap… Continue Reading
AI: Algorithms and Justice
Berkman Kein Center – “Government institutions around the globe are beginning to explore decision automation in a variety of contexts, from determining eligibility for services; to evaluating where to deploy health inspectors and law enforcement personnel; to defining boundaries around voting districts. Use cases for technologies that incorporate AI or machine learning will expand as… Continue Reading
Fantastic fall foliage and where to find it
Washington Post – “This is starting out as a complicated season for leaf peepers. As the East Coast sweated through record October heat, parts of the Rockies were buried under wildly early snow. Late heat and early cold can stifle some of the most photo-worthy foliage, but soon enough, large swaths of the country will… Continue Reading
Analysis Shows Top 1% Gained $21 Trillion in Wealth Since 1989 While Bottom Half Lost $900 Billion
Commondreams.org: “Adding to the mountain of statistical evidence showing the severity of U.S. inequality, an analysis published Friday found that the top one percent of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989 while the bottom 50 percent lost $900 billion. Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing think tank People’s Policy Project, broke down the… Continue Reading
The Best Way to Search for Free Software Online
lifehacker: “…you want to search for is “open-source” plus the general topic of whatever app or service you’re trying to find. This won’t always net you an app that costs you nothing, but you’re likely to have better luck. You can also search for “alternative to” a conventional app that does something you don’t want… Continue Reading
Crawl data analysis of 2 billion links from 90 million domains offer glimpse into today’s web
SearcEngineLand: Data analysis reveals the distribution of PageRank is highly right-skewed meaning the majority of hosts have very low PageRank – “The web is not only essential for people working in digital marketing, but for everyone. We professionals in this field need to understand the big picture of how the web functions for our daily… Continue Reading
Internet Archive releases 2,500 more MS-DOS games
Internet Archive Blogs: “Another few thousand DOS Games are playable at the Internet Archive! Since our initial announcement in 2015, we’ve added occasional new games here and there to the collection, but this will be our biggest update yet, ranging from tiny recent independent productions to long-forgotten big-name releases from decades ago.\ To browse the… Continue Reading
Edward Snowden – Without encryption, we will lose all privacy. This is our new battleground.
UK Guardian – Opinion – Edward Snowden – “In every country of the world, the security of computers keeps the lights on, the shelves stocked, the dams closed, and transportation running. For more than half a decade, the vulnerability of our computers and computer networks has been ranked the number one risk in the US… Continue Reading
Google introducing auto-delete controls for your Location History and activity data
Google Blog – “Whether you’re looking for the latest news or the quickest driving route, we aim to make our products helpful for everyone. And when you turn on settings like Location History or Web & App Activity, the data can make Google products more useful for you—like recommending a restaurant that you might enjoy,… Continue Reading
Google’s new voice recorder app transcribes in real time, even when offline
TechCrunch: “At Google’s hardware event this morning, the company introduced a new voice recorder app for Android devices, which will tap into advances in real-time speech processing, speech recognition and AI to automatically transcribe recordings in real time as the person is speaking. The improvements will allow users to take better advantage of the phone’s… Continue Reading
