Digit_al Society

"Copyright and Creation, a policy brief from a collection of respected scholars at the rock-ribbed London School of Economics, argues that the evidence shows that piracy isn't causing any grave harm to the entertainment industry, and that anti-piracy measures like the three-strikes provision in Britain's Digital Economy Act don't work. They call on lawmakers to take an evidence-led approach to Internet and copyright law, and to consider the interests of the public and not just big entertainment companies looking for legal backstops to their profit-maximisation strategies. "

"The reason is that routine big-data analytical techniques can now effectively manufacture personal data that is not protected by any of the measures we've used up to now. A well-known illustration of this is the way Target, an American retail chain, creatively collated scattered pieces of data about individuals' changes in shopping habits to predict the delivery date of pregnant shoppers - so that they could then be targeted with relevant advertisements."

"Because trends in data only become discernible with time, Masters believes it will be five or 10 years before we have a firm handle on what's going on."

"The 3-D imaging method used to create the prints yields an enormous depth map while also capturing exact color. The resulting print has a resolution of 50 microns, easily fooling the average observer into thinking it's an original."

"From a computer science perspective, learning the behaviour of a single user is tough. This is the small data problem; unlike big data, where patterns and trends easily emerge, individual human beings can be unpredictable and can change behaviour, which is not helpful for pattern-hunting algorithms."

"In a discussion of how to secure the "critical infrastructure" of the United States he described the phenomenon of compromised computer hardware - namely, chips that have hidden "back doors" inserted into them at the design or manufacturing stage - as "the problem from hell". And, he went on, "frankly, it's not a problem that can be solved"."

"So instead of switching off the internet, the conversation should be about how to change it. How to clarify what we're giving for what we take. And the responsibility should not be with young people, in their WiFi-reliant worlds - it should be with the massive corporations that profit from them. As with cigarette packets (their photos of messy lungs a stark reminder of the choice you're making), so should the internet be required to advertise its risks, to alert you to where your data is being held. Because this is not just somewhere we play. The internet is where we live."

"Scientists from University of Washington have been struggling for the past decade to decipher the complex structure of an enzyme that exhibits behavior similar to that of an enzyme key in the development of AIDS from an HIV infection, and which might hold a critical role in building a cure for the disease. Gamers playing spatial game Foldit have managed to collectively determine the enzyme's structure in ten days."

"Meet GIST, a gesture-controlled wearable device that helps the visually impaired navigate the world around them. University of Nevada computer scientists Vinitha Khambadkar and Eelke Folmer recently debuted GIST at a technology conference."

"The device tracks a single person with an accuracy of plus or minus 10 centimeters - about the size of an adult hand. Apart from the ability to "see" through a wall, its main advantage is that the person being tracked isn't required to wear a transmitter. While other location systems depend on Wi-Fi, this device can track a person's movements within the radius of its radio waves."

"China is home to the world's largest population of digital natives, totaling more than 75 million people - that's almost twice as many as the U.S., which has more than 41 million."

"Many younger people just don't think in terms of their future employability, of identity theft, of legal problems if they're being provocative. Not to mention straightforward reputational issues." (Paris Brown, Phippen adds, "clearly never thought what she tweeted when she was 14" might one day stop her being Britain's first youth police commissioner.)"

"The volunteer workforce that built the project's flagship, the English-language Wikipedia-and must defend it against vandalism, hoaxes, and manipulation-has shrunk by more than a third since 2007 and is still shrinking. ..."

"Here's the thing about privacy: It's tedious. Rather than dwell on Google being accused of illegal wiretapping with Street View, or whether Facebook got explicit consent from users before a recent update in privacy practices, we need to evolve the conversation around the monetization of our data in the digital realm toward identity. "

"While the Moocs are associated with high-status universities, Alison's focus is on the vast numbers of people around the world needing to improve their vocational skills and training."

"Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory. Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten."

"a small city in China's central Anhui province, purporting to show vice-mayor Wang Hun pay a friendly visit to an elderly woman. There's only one problem: The image, which appears to show Wang floating above a particularly tiny woman, has clearly been modified."