"There are currently no usable photo data sets of mask-wearing people that can be used to train and evaluate facial recognition systems. The NIST study addressed this problem by superimposing masks (of various colours, sizes and positions) over images of faces, as seen here:"

"On the other hand, users (as distinct from developers) are about to see an upside of Apple's monopoly power. The next update of its mobile operating system, iOS14, includes a change that should have a dire impact on many online advertisers. The industry assigns a unique code to each device called an IDFA. Knowing your IDFA can help advertisers tell whether their ads are effective, particularly when they've shown you the same ad in multiple places. Facebook uses the IDFA as part of Audience Network, its ad network for developers."

"Facebook has taken down the pages of US right-wing group Patriot Prayer and its founder Joey Gibson, a company spokesman said, as part of efforts to remove "violent social militias" from the platform. Patriot Prayer has hosted dozens of pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies and attendees have repeatedly clashed with leftwing groups around Portland, Oregon, where one supporter of the group was killed this week."

""To my knowledge, this is the first instance in which a European DPA has imposed a ban on a contact-tracing app already in use in light of national developments regarding contagion levels," he told us. "It is thus possible that other European DPAs will impose similar bans in the future and demand that contact-tracing apps be changed as soon as contagion levels substantially decrease also in other parts of Europe. Norway has currently one of the lowest contagion levels in Europe.""

"The researchers suggest guidelines for efficient regulations, such that AVs can cooperate and significantly enhance traffic flow even when fewer than 5% of the vehicles on the road are autonomous, as seen in the accompanying image. In their article, the researchers describe how AVs should behave on a freeway in order to self-organize into groups that split the traffic flow into controllable clusters. It was observed that it takes less than two minutes to achieve self-organized high-speed, greener and safer traffic flow when starting from congested traffic."

"Admission algorithms can make or break your academic plans. A Washington Post investigation found 44 schools use prediction software to give applicants a score out of 100 for its admissions process. The score considers different aspects of a student's application from test scores, home address, transcripts, and even what websites they've visited. That's all calculated to rate how strong of a match a student is for a school."

"The Authenticator analyzes videos or images and tells users the percentage chance that they've been artificially manipulated. For videos, the tool can even analyze individual frames in real time."

"The pictures, analyzed by HuffPost, show a picture of Biden had been edited to make him look older, by darkening his skin and emphasizing imperfections. On Monday the campaign's Trump War Room Twitter account tweeted a manipulated video that appeared to show Biden saying, "You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America." The video was labelled "manipulated media" by Twitter."

"This is the biggest concern. I can't overstate how big of a problem this is. I'd be the first that wishes I could wave a magic wand and have an easy solution where all of this could be solved. A teacher I know says there's just 5 percent or 10 percent of her kids in Mountain View, Calif., who are just checked out. She can't get them to show up. She can even see that their language has degraded because they haven't spent as much time with adults or peers in an academic setting."

"The decisions are significant because Google has reported massive growth in law enforcement use of such "geofence" searches. Google says there was a 1,500-percent increase between 2017 and 2018 and a further 600-percent jump from 2018 to 2019. That's a hundredfold increase in two years. Google received 180 geofence search requests a week during 2019, according to CNet."

"Facebook plans to flag any attempt by the Trump campaign to declare a premature victory in the presidential race on the platform, the company announced on Thursday."

"The computer had revealed a new theory about how Covid-19 impacts the body: the bradykinin hypothesis. "

"And you thought Alexa spying on your dinner conversations was creepy? Everything is listening. Let me illustrate with a few examples."

"The role of so-called social media "bots" - automated accounts capable of posting content or interacting with other users with no direct human involvement - has been the subject of much scrutiny and attention in recent years. "

"As a society, we should care not just about how much innovation takes place, but also about the types of new technologies that are developed. We ought to ensure we are investing in technologies that are safe, environmentally sound, empower rather than simply replace human labor, and are consistent with democratic values and human rights."

"According to Wikipedian MJL, another administrator on the site, AmaryllisGardner had created or edited 49% of all the articles on the Scots Wikipedia. "Speaking as an admin there, here's what happened with Scots Wikipedia," they tweeted after the story broke on Reddit. "Nobody cared about maintaining it. Someone stepped up because no one else did. That person was never given any guidance. Articles ended up being very poorly mistranslated.""

"The Auschwitz museum has called a new trend, where users of video-sharing app TikTok role-play as Holocaust victims, "hurtful and offensive," but added that it did not want to shame young people involved. The museum at the site of the former Nazi death camp was responding to the point of view videos."

"Eventually, we will reach a point of full saturation, a period in our evolution in which digital bits will outnumber atoms on Earth, a world "mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code," according to an article published in AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing."

"The difference between skimming and reading with all our intelligence is the difference between fully activated reading brains and their short-circuited, screen-dulled versions."

"The UK's impending exit from the EU has provided an urgent economic need for such a facility - a UN report last month found at least $10bn (£7.9bn) of gold, platinum and other precious metals were dumped every year in a growing mountain of e-waste."