Digit_al Society

"The judge also wants the app wiped from existing users' smartphones and tablets, though it's unclear which users that would apply to. It's also unknown at this point whether the judge has the power to enforce this ban and what the chances are of it going through. The report stated that three app store providers could be subject to a fine of 20,000 Brazilian real (about $9,000) for every day the app remains available for download after the 10-day period starting with Wednesday. The judge argues that the app violates Brazil's constitution The judge argues that the app violates Brazil's constitution, which states freedom of expression cannot be promoted if it's done anonymously."

"The hackers who stole 4.5 million patient records from an American hospital network might have exploited the infamous Heartbleed bug to carry out the hack - the first time the bug has been reported to be at the center of a high-profile breach."

"Among six to seven year olds, who have grown up with YouTube, Spotify music streaming and the BBC iPlayer, the average DQ (digital quotient) score was 98, higher than for those aged between 45 and 49, who scored an average of 96. Digital understanding peaks between 14 and 15, with a DQ of 113 - and then drops gradually throughout adulthood, before falling rapidly in old age."

"This story is getting squrrelier and squrrelier. Yes, security companies love to hype the threat to sell their products and services. But this goes further: single-handedly trying to create a panic, and then profiting off that panic."

"The message seems to be that if you really want to keep something private, treat it as a secret, and in the age of algorithmic analysis and big data, perhaps best to follow Winston Smith's bitter lesson from Nineteen Eighty-Four: "If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.""

"Jimmy Wales said it was dangerous to have companies decide what should and should not be allowed to appear on the internet. His comments came after the bosses of the leading search engines met the heads of European data watchdogs on Thursday."

"If you're a student and looking to establish yourself in a field of study that has a bright future in the world of high technology, then you'll need the mindset of a futurist. Understanding the direction of technology will help you decide how you want to position yourself to succeed, and figure out exactly what you need to study to get there."

"When it comes to the speed of these improvements, Yudkowsky says its important to not confuse the current speed of AI research with the speed of a real AI once built. Those are two very different things. What's more, there's no reason to believe that an AI won't show a sudden huge leap in intelligence, resulting in an ensuing "intelligence explosion" (a better term for the Singularity)."

"The "March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance," a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government's secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings."

"The type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor's web browser to draw a hidden image, and was first documented in a upcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium. Because each computer draws the image slightly differently, the images can be used to assign each user's device a number that uniquely identifies it."

"99 percent of the names submitted to the list are accepted; the court called this "wildly loose." The database has grown from 227,932 names in 2009 to its current stratospheric heights. There is no official, public procedure for having your name removed from the list. The US government is seeking to end the trial by invoking state secrecy."

Scary but if we are not careful - could be true in the future - "Existing properties will be required to install them over a four-year period. These would supply real-time images of terrorists, criminals and paedophiles at any time of day and night. Any disconnection of a camera would immediately alert the police as prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. I have held talks with the industry on whether the cameras should be in bathrooms and bedrooms. It would clearly be nonsensical to exclude them, as terrorists and paedophiles often make use of these rooms."

"A new algorithm, however, is attempting to identify specific syndromes much sooner by screening photos for characteristic facial features associated with specific genetic conditions, such as Down's syndrome, Progeria, and Fragile X syndrome."

"The NSA uses laughably sloppy tools for deciding whether a target is a "US person" (a person in the USA, or an American citizen abroad). For example, people whose address books contain foreign persons are presumed by some analysts to be foreign. Likewise, people who post in "foreign" languages (the US has no official state language) are presumed by some analysts to be non-US persons."

"America's National Security Agency gathers unfathomable mountains of Internet communications from fiber optic taps and other means, but it says it only retains and searches the communications of "targeted" individuals who've done something suspicious. Guess what? If you read Boing Boing, you've been targeted."

"The BBC complained that a 2007 article about the ousting of Merrill Lynch's CEO had been pulled from certain Google searches in Europe. The Guardian revealed that six articles had been pulled from search results, including three from as far back as 2010 about a Scottish referee who was forced to resign after lying about a penalty and one from 2011 about French workers making Post-it art."

"The response on Twitter was predictably splenetic. Suárez's supporters claimed the images were manipulated, their argument promoted by a rather well-done diptych which did the rounds. The left-hand image - which had been photoshopped to remove the marks - purported to be the "real" unaltered version, while the right hand side - Gentile's original image - was labelled the fake."

"Fear of data-mining of healthcare could be costing as many as 100,000 lives a year, according to Google's Larry Page. Speaking out in response to fears over his company's vast haul of personal information, Page made the case that not only is Google not going too far with collecting and analysing such information - it's not going far enough."

"The algorithm at play is performing what's commonly referred to as predictive policing. Using years - and sometimes decades - worth of crime reports, the algorithm analyses the data to identify areas with high probabilities for certain types of crime, placing little red boxes on maps of the city that are streamed into patrol cars."