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peterconnelly

Data Sharing Knowledge Gaps Widespread Among Patients - 0 views

  • The Health Care Data Sharing Survey, commissioned and published by Chicago-based clinical data management company Q-Centrix, was conducted in December 2021 with a sample size of 1,191 people.
  • Fifty-three percent of respondents were female, and 47 percent were male. Respondents fell into four age groups: 18-29 (21 percent), 30-44 (27 percent), 45-60 (29 percent), and over 60 (23 percent). Respondents were also split based on household income: $49,999 or less (41 percent), $50,000-$99,999 (34 percent), and $100,000 or more (25 percent).
  • These patient concerns may translate to a hesitancy to share data for purposes other than improving their own healthcare. Some respondents said they were unsure about whether they’d be willing to share their de-identified healthcare data for clinical research (21 percent), to improve hospital services (22 percent), to improve other patients’ healthcare (22 percent), and to advance care equity and identify disparities (24 percent).
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  • Over half (51 percent) of respondents reported that they either didn’t believe or weren’t sure that the data recorded in their EMRs was accurate.
  • The healthcare industry’s growing reliance on clinical data and EHRs requires that patients are educated and empowered about data collection, sharing, and use, the report authors noted. Bridging knowledge gaps between health systems and patients has the potential to significantly improve care, medical research, and health equity.
peterconnelly

Opinion: How streaming can avoid the same fate as cable TV - CNN - 0 views

  • Streaming networks were the center of attention last month when the television industry — or, more accurately now, the entertainment industry — staged its annual ritual known as the "upfronts."
  • The program distributors (what used to be called studios) are trying to navigate a marketplace that is not entirely sure where it's going. Streaming was expected to take over as the be-all/end-all of not just TV, but also the film industry. But the sudden crash for Netflix, the industry leader, in both subscribers and stock price, has the business collectively hitting the pause button. After all, who knows whether an overall better idea than streaming is only a few years away?
  • on. After
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  • hugely successful media giants dominating the entertainment scene, growing fat and cocky, dismissive of upstart competitors, followed by a humbling slide toward marginalization, if not outright irrelevance.
  • First radio was so dominant that surely no one thought television could ever replace it. Then broadcast TV was such an enormous presence in American life, some network executives dismissed cable TV as destined to be small-timey forever.
  • A viewer could watch a whole series in a single day and never be bothered by somebody selling corn flakes.
  • There could be a number of reasons for the huge subscriber drop, but the biggest seems to be increased competition, with a slew of companies with great resources and deep libraries of content entering the streaming world in recent years, including Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery (the parent company of CNN).
  • Netflix, following in the footsteps of streaming competitors like Hulu and HBO Max, is reportedly exploring a new option for financial security. Or rather an old one, a really old one.
  • The one that brought all those people together in Manhattan for the upfronts: ad dollars.
peterconnelly

Opinion: Budweiser's very smart Super Bowl call - CNN - 0 views

  • This year's Super Bowl will be full of firsts: the first without a packed stadium; the first requiring players and coaches to follow Covid-19 protocol; and the first broadcast in a long time to go without ads from some of its big, perennial advertisers.
  • That is surprising considering the Super Bowl, which typically draws around 100 million viewers
  • has been frequently rated the most-watched broadcast of th
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  • Budweiser has also released a 90-second digital ad encouraging people to embrace vaccination.
  • What's even more extraordinary is Anheuser-Busch's decision to scrap its Budweiser Super Bowl ad in favor of supporting the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative's vaccine awareness initiative and donating money to go toward the organizations' future ad campaigns.
  • e year
  • This move by Budweiser is big, and it gives humanitarian organizations like mine hope and optimism.
  • who among the wealthiest corporations will join Budweiser? Which will put a fraction of their profits to push back against urgent and catastrophic events — and potentially save lives?
  • I'll be honest. It is hard for me to have a rosy outlook on companies reporting tens of billions of profits in 2020.
  • I know corporate success helps our economy, rewards innovators and brings job security to middle class workers. But I also know that with investment we can solve hunger. If ordinary American donors can contribute enough to feed a family of five for a month, corporations and those who've done well during the pandemic could do exponentially more.
  • By applying their ad money to public service, Budweiser is not only anticipating a better future -- it is helping make it a reality.
peterconnelly

Ukrainians see their culture being erased as Russia hits beloved sites - 0 views

  • “This was intentional. It was a prepared plan. They knew that this legacy was here,” Micay said, wading through the scorched remains, pointing to where paintings, sculptures and books had filled the rooms during her nearly 30 years as the museum director.
  • “This was done so Russia can say that there is no Ukrainian culture, that Ukrainian identity does not exist.”
  • Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of intentionally attacking hundreds of cultural sites, which is a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention.
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  • Russian troops burned down a museum in the town of Ivankiv that housed a collection of paintings by the renowned Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, who was an inspiration to Pablo Picasso. The House of Culture in Lozova was razed by a Russian missile. Other theaters, churches, monuments and libraries have been destroyed. 
  • Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said his office has recorded more than 350 “Russian war crimes against cultural heritage” as of May 19.
  • Attacks on cultural property are not uncommon during wartime, said Richard Kurin, a cultural anthropologist and the founder of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative.
  • “In conflict, you get situations where people want to erase someone else’s culture,” Kurin said. 
  • “It’s demoralizing to people because people’s culture is highly symbolic and it gives them a sense of identity and morale,” Kurin said. “If you think about what the Ukrainians are fighting for, a lot of it has to do with their being Ukrainian.”
  • “The majority of damage to cultural property has been through collateral damage and the way that the Russian Federation is fighting the conflict,”
  • But whether the attacks are indiscriminate or targeted, Stone said Ukraine was at risk of losing irreplaceable cultural sites and artifacts that make up the fabric of Ukrainian identity.
  • “The Kharkiv legacy is in danger,” he said. “This is all part of Russia’s genocide of Ukrainian culture and national identity.”
peterconnelly

Twitter settles after feds claim it used 2FA info to target ads - 0 views

  • Twitter reached a $150 million settlement with the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission over alleged misrepresentations of its data privacy practices, the agencies announced on Wednesday.
  • The settlement, which still needs to be approved by a federal judge, would resolve claims from the government that Twitter did not adequately inform its users about how their contact information would be used to target ads rather than just secure their accounts, in violation of the FTC Act and a 2011 settlement it reached with the agency.
  • The agencies alleged Twitter told users it collected phone numbers and email addresses to secure their accounts with two-factor authentication, but did not disclose it also used that information to help advertisers target their messages.
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  • “The $150 million penalty reflects the seriousness of the allegations against Twitter, and the substantial new compliance measures to be imposed as a result of today’s proposed settlement will help prevent further misleading tactics that threaten users’ privacy.” 
  • The settlement is the latest attempt by U.S. law enforcers to apply consumer protection law to alleged data privacy violations.
  • “Keeping data secure and respecting privacy is something we take extremely seriously, and we have cooperated with the FTC every step of the way,” he added.
peterconnelly

Tech experts call for Congress to bring 'skeptical approach' to crypto - 0 views

  • More than two dozen high-profile tech experts have signed onto a letter asking congressional leaders to apply a skeptical eye to the booming crypto industry.
  • market cap of $1.27 trillion
  • “We urge you to resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these risky, flawed, and unproven digital financial instruments and to instead take an approach that protects the public interest and ensures technology is deployed in genuine service to the needs of ordinary citizens,”
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  • The tech leaders question claims by crypto evangelists that “crypto-assets are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good” and instead urge lawmakers to “take a critical, skeptical approach” toward crypto.
  • digital token bitcoin taking up a $562 billion chunk alone.
  • The signatories write that “not all innovation is unqualifiedly good” and say that “the history of technology is full of dead ends, false starts, and wrong turns.”
peterconnelly

Where Will We Be in 20 Years? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “Demographics are destiny.”It is a phrase, often attributed to the French philosopher Auguste Comte, that suggests much of the future is preordained by the very simple trend lines of populations. Want to understand how the power dynamic between the United States and China will change over the next 20 years? An economist would tell you to look at the demographics of both countries. (China’s economy is likely to overtake the U.S. economy by 2028, but remain smaller on a per capita basis.)
  • Predicting the future may be a fool’s errand. But using demographic data to assess the opportunities and challenges of the next two decades is something that business and political leaders don’t do enough. We’re all too swept up in the here and now, the next quarter and the next year.
  • More people around the world had more disposable income and increasingly chose to live closer to cities with greater access to airports. That, married with the human condition that people like to be around other people, makes forecasting certain elements of the future almost mathematical.
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  • One aspect of the future that demographics can’t help predict are technological innovations.
  • About 70 percent of the world population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to data from the United Nations.
  • The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that the world will need about 28 percent more energy in 2040 than it did in 2015 based on the number of people in the country and consumption patterns; on our current trajectory, about 42 percent of electricity in the United States will come from renewable sources.
  • Technology has led us to expect that goods and services will be delivered at the push of a button, often within minutes.
  • Entrepreneurs, industry leaders and policymakers are already at work solving some of the problems that demographic data suggest are ahead of us, whether it’s figuring out how to incentivize farmers to sequester carbon, use insurance as a tool for reducing coal production, reinvent the motors that power heavy industry so they use less energy, or write laws that help govern code.
  • What about the metaverse? Or crypto technology? Or robots taking our jobs? Or A.I. taking over everything? Demographics can’t answer those questions. All of those things may happen, but life in 2041 may also look a lot like it does today — maybe with the exception of those flying cars.
peterconnelly

Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial verdict - CNN - 0 views

  • (CNN)A jury has found both Amber Heard and Johnny Depp liable for defamation in their lawsuits against each other.
  • Depp sued Heard, his ex-wife, for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in which she described herself as a "public figure representing domestic abuse." Though Depp was not named in the article, he claims it cost him lucrative acting roles. Heard countersued her ex-husband for defamation over statements Depp's attorney made about her abuse claims.
  • Heard kept her eyes down as the verdict was read. Depp was not present in court, but released a statement that said, in part, "the jury gave me my life back."
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  • "From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me," he said. "I feel at peace knowing I have finally accomplished that."
  • "The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I'm heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband," Heard said.
  • In her testimony, Heard said that Depp was verbally and physically abusive during their relationship. She also accused Depp of sexual violence.
  • Depp claimed multiple times on the stand that he has never struck a woman, denied Heard's allegation of sexual battery and called himself a victim of domestic abuse by Heard, which she denies.
  • Heard had notably fewer vocal supporters than Depp in the entertainment business and in and around the courthouse.
peterconnelly

Should kids be allowed to use smartphones in the classroom? - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • The commonly recommended age for a first cellphone is 13 years old. Most kids that age are in the eighth grade, getting ready to learn algebra. The desperate phone calls to 911 coming from inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., where 21 people were killed last month, were placed by children younger than that.
  • In the aftermath of another school shooting, concerned parents are weighing whether phones are a distraction or a potential lifeline for their children.
  • Phone ownership already is widespread among younger children, with 43 percent of 8-to-12-year-olds owning their own smartphone
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  • The devices have become part of many students’ daily lives, despite various attempts over the years by state legislatures and cities to keep them out of classrooms.
  • Despite any emotional benefits for adults or educational use for children, screen-time and security experts don’t recommend taking smartphones to class, at least not without some ground rules and guidance on how to use them in a worst-case scenario.
  • A phone can make unwanted noises, and in a silent lockdown, even a vibration could be too loud. Depending on their age, kids might also be tempted to post about an ongoing incident to social media, which Trump said could both inspire other potential gunmen seeking fame or reveal details about their location. Even the ability to call 911 isn’t a good reason, because an entire school full of people calling at once could overload a switchboard.
  • She said it’s a distraction, and she worries it could replace in-person social interactions and knows she can’t have oversight over many conversations or posts that might happen via smartphone.
  • She’s also worried about misinformation that her daughter could see or read.
  • “Phones are not going to stop school shootings. Gun control might,” Twenge said.
peterconnelly

Wikipedia acts as a check on Putin's false view of history - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Whether to call Hitler gravely immoral or evil is one of literally hundreds of discussions about this article, which is among the most viewed ever on the site — more than 125 million times over the last 15 years, twice as many as Jesus’s total and in the neighborhood of the number for the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo.
  • Setting the record straight matters because historical misinformation walks hand in hand with current disinformation.
  • Putin has two claims he says are backed by the historical record: that there has never been a separate Ukrainian nation, and that people who claim there is a separate nation must have another motive, whether personal gain or an ideological cause like Nazism.
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  • She showed that accounts of so-called “aces” — fighters said to have heroically held off much more powerful enemies with a single tank or plane — were based on propaganda.
  • In making these repairs, Coffman faced resistance from a group of editors who were mainly military buffs and wanted to write about battlefield valor without too much scrutiny. She, however, kept coming back to facts and sources — how do we know what we think we know? — and an insistence that Wikipedia not be swept up in mythology.
  • In a speech last year, Putin strolled through 1,000 years of battles and alliances to justify his claim of the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
  • Just look at the rhetoric around Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin has described as a battle to “de-Nazify” the leadership of Ukraine.
  • Since the Russian invasion, the English Wikipedia articles about the historical figures and topics Putin invoked have been racking up pop-star numbers.
  • When it comes to allegations about Nazi collaboration by prominent Ukrainian nationalists like Bandera, Wikipedia has pulled no punches. Even as Putin has emphasized these Nazi ties as a reason for his invasion, Wikipedia has resisted attempts to water down this history.
  • When Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was asked how Ukraine could be in need of de-Nazification if its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish, Lavrov replied: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.” It was an appalling answer that, according to the Israeli government, Putin apologized for.
  • In an unusual step, the English Wikipedia article brings up this particular falsehood to explicitly refute it.
  • The Wikipedia project comes with a stubborn confidence that facts can guide us through the darkness. In Wikipedia’s 20-year history, this belief has never been asked to do more.
peterconnelly

Opinion: Texas' new social media law affects all of us - CNN - 0 views

  • Earlier this month, a federal appeals court ruled that a Texas law, which allows residents to sue social media companies for "censoring" what they post, could go into effect.
  • The biggest challenge facing social media companies today is doing exactly what HB 20 seems to disallow: removing misinformation and hate speech.
  • They can remove toxic content like misinformation and hate speech and get tied up in bottomless, costly lawsuits. They can let their platforms turn into cesspools of hate and misinformation and watch people stop using them altogether. Or they can just stop offering their services in Texas, which also exposes them to potential liability since the law makes it illegal for social media platforms to discriminate against Texans based on their location.
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  • The state law, referred to as HB 20, makes it illegal for large social networks like Facebook and Twitter to "block, ban, remove, de-platform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression."
  • HB 20 does carve out exemptions, including those that allow social networks to remove content that "directly incites criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group" based on certain characteristics, or that "is unlawful expression."
  • We need to fix social networks by removing toxic content. This month's appeals court ruling does the exact opposite and could even deal a fatal blow to social media as we know it. The only thing worse than not fixing the social platforms we have now would be to see them be subject to a constant slew of lawsuits or devolve into platforms that become bastions of hate speech and misinformation. Let's hope Congress doesn't let us down.
peterconnelly

'Quantum Internet' Inches Closer With Advance in Data Teleportation - The New York Times - 0 views

  • From Santa Barbara, Calif., to Hefei, China, scientists are developing a new kind of computer that will make today’s machines look like toys.
  • the technology will perform tasks in minutes that even supercomputers could not complete in thousands of years.
  • The new experiment indicates that scientists can stretch a quantum network across an increasingly large number of sites. “We are now building small quantum networks in the lab,” said Ronald Hanson
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  • Quantum teleportation — what he called “spooky action at a distance” — can transfer information between locations without actually moving the physical matter that holds it.
  • This technology could profoundly change the way data travels from place to place. It draws on more than a century of research involving quantum mechanics, a field of physics that governs the subatomic realm and behaves unlike anything we experience in our everyday lives. Quantum teleportation not only moves data between quantum computers, but it also does so in such a way that no one can intercept it.
  • These entangled systems could be electrons, particles of light or other objects. In the Netherlands, Dr. Hanson and his team used what is called a nitrogen vacancy center — a tiny empty space in a synthetic diamond in which electrons can be trapped.
  • Traditional computers perform calculations by processing “bits” of information, with each bit holding either a 1 or a 0. By harnessing the strange behavior of quantum mechanics, a quantum bit, or qubit, can store a combination of 1 and 0 — a little like how a spinning coin holds the tantalizing possibility that it will turn up either heads or tails when it finally falls flat on the table.
  • Researchers believe these devices could one day speed the creation of new medicines, power advances in artificial intelligence and summarily crack the encryption that protects computers vital to national security. Across the globe, governments, academic labs, start-ups and tech giants are spending billions of dollars exploring the technology.
  • Although it cannot move objects from place to place, it can move information by taking advantage of a quantum property called “entanglement”: A change in the state of one quantum system instantaneously affects the state of another, distant one.
  • “It does not work that way today. Google knows what you are running on its servers.”
  • The information also cannot be intercepted. A future quantum internet, powered by quantum teleportation, could provide a new kind of encryption that is theoretically unbreakable.
criscimagnael

Living better with algorithms | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 0 views

  • At a talk on ethical artificial intelligence, the speaker brought up a variation on the famous trolley problem, which outlines a philosophical choice between two undesirable outcomes.
  • Say a self-driving car is traveling down a narrow alley with an elderly woman walking on one side and a small child on the other, and no way to thread between both without a fatality. Who should the car hit?
  • To get a sense of what this means, suppose that regulators require that any public health content — for example, on vaccines — not be vastly different for politically left- and right-leaning users. How should auditors check that a social media platform complies with this regulation? Can a platform be made to comply with the regulation without damaging its bottom line? And how does compliance affect the actual content that users do see?
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  • a self-driving car could have avoided choosing between two bad outcomes by making a decision earlier on — the speaker pointed out that, when entering the alley, the car could have determined that the space was narrow and slowed to a speed that would keep everyone safe.
  • Auditors have to inspect the algorithm without accessing sensitive user data.
  • Other considerations come into play as well, such as balancing the removal of misinformation with the protection of free speech.
  • To meet these challenges, Cen and Shah developed an auditing procedure that does not need more than black-box access to the social media algorithm (which respects trade secrets), does not remove content (which avoids issues of censorship), and does not require access to users (which preserves users’ privacy).
  • which is known to help reduce the spread of misinformation
  • In labor markets, for example, workers learn their preferences about what kinds of jobs they want, and employers learn their preferences about the qualifications they seek from workers.
  • But learning can be disrupted by competition
  • it is indeed possible to get to a stable outcome (workers aren’t incentivized to leave the matching market), with low regret (workers are happy with their long-term outcomes), fairness (happiness is evenly distributed), and high social welfare.
  • For instance, when Covid-19 cases surged in the pandemic, many cities had to decide what restrictions to adopt, such as mask mandates, business closures, or stay-home orders. They had to act fast and balance public health with community and business needs, public spending, and a host of other considerations.
  • But of course, no county exists in a vacuum.
  • These complex interactions matter,
  • “Accountability, legitimacy, trust — these principles play crucial roles in society and, ultimately, will determine which systems endure with time.” 
kiraagne

Before Kyle Rittenhouse's Murder Trial, a Debate Over Terms Like 'Victim' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A judge’s decision that the word “victim” generally could not be used in court to refer to the people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse after protests in Kenosha, Wis., last year drew widespread attention and outrage this week.
  • Mr. Rittenhouse, who has been charged with six criminal counts, including first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the deaths of two men and the wounding of another, is expected to argue that he fired his gun because he feared for his life.
  • Prosecutors say he was a violent vigilante who illegally possessed the rifle and whose actions resulted in chaos and bloodshed.
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  • This week, as Judge Schroeder ruled on a motion by the prosecution, he also said that he would allow the terms “looters” and “rioters” to be used to refer to the men who were shot
  • The experts said the term “victim” can appear prejudicial in a court of law, heavily influencing a jury by presupposing which people have been wronged.
  • State law in Wisconsin allows a person to fire in self-defense if the shooter “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.”Editors’ PicksTo Save a Swirling Season, Atlanta Turned to Soft ServeThink You Know the 1960s? ‘The Shattering’ Asks You to Think Again.
  • “In a self-defense case, the people who were shot are to some extent on trial,
  • Prosecutors have repeatedly tried to introduce evidence of Mr. Rittenhouse’s associations with the far-right Proud Boys, as well as a cellphone video taken weeks before the shootings in Kenosha in which Mr. Rittenhouse suggested that he wished he had his rifle so he could shoot men leaving a pharmacy. The judge did not allow either as evidence for trial.
  • Thomas Binger, a prosecutor, argued that the judge was creating a “double standard” and said that the words he sought to have prohibited — relating to rioting and other damage — were “as loaded, if not more loaded, than the term ‘victim.’
criscimagnael

3 Reasons Why Smart Technology Is Actually Making Us Less Productive | Inc.com - 0 views

  • Here's the thing though--as a parent, I probably shouldn't have to depend on a $400 piece of smart technology to remind me to, you know, show up.Except, unfortunately, I do.
  • The downside is that I've noticed that as our dependence on technology increases, our actual productivity decreases. I think technology is really good at making it easier to stay busy, but busy isn't the same thing as productive.
  • 1. Notifications are basically technology's drug. 
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  • Except, all I do all day is tap icons with red dots like a digital version of whack-a-mole, trying to get rid of all the notifications. Research has shown that this constant stimulation on our devices raises the dopamine in our brains, which basically means they are like drugs. 
  • It's hard to be productive when you stop to look at your phone every 10-12 minutes.
  • It's true, technology has allowed us to do some pretty incredible things. I can't argue with the fact that it has allowed us to solve problems that were previously insurmountable, but at a very basic level, all of this smart technology has made us dumb. Mostly, I think it's because of how much we now depend on it for even the most basic things. 
  • Here's the thing. If you don't use a muscle, after a while you'll lose it.  Sure, it's not technically a muscle, but if you stop using your brain because your watch tells you when it's time to go to a meeting, or stand up, or use the bathroom-- can we at least agree you're not getting any smarter? The more we hand over to machines what makes us unique as humans--our ability to think, process, and make decisions--the less we stretch and grow our capacity to do those things. 
  • Have you ever sat in a restaurant and looked around? Of course not, the last time you were in a restaurant you were busy looking at your phone. But if you had, you would have seen a bunch of other people who were doing the same thing. A room full of people, all sitting at tables with presumably other people they know and have some level of affection for, staring at an illuminated screen. 
  • But it has also increased the space in our relationships to the point where we don't talk, we Slack.
  • igital conversations are very different than real-world conversations. When smart technology helps remove barriers to communication, that's a good thing. But when we substitute technology for relationships and real conversations, it has real-world consequences.
criscimagnael

'I don't even remember what I read': People enter a 'dissociative state' when using social media | UW News - 0 views

  • “I think people experience a lot of shame around social media use,” said lead author Amanda Baughan, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “One of the things I like about this framing of ‘dissociation’ rather than ‘addiction’ is that it changes the narrative. Instead of: ‘I should be able to have more self-control,’ it’s more like: ‘We all naturally dissociate in many ways throughout our day – whether it’s daydreaming or scrolling through Instagram, we stop paying attention to what’s happening around us.'”
  • “Having a stop built into a list meant that it was only going to be a few minutes of reading and then, if they wanted to really go crazy, they could read another list. But again, it’s only a few minutes. Having that bite-sized piece of content to consume was something that really resonated.”
  • Over the course of the month, 42% of participants (18 people) agreed or strongly agreed with that statement at least once. After the month, the researchers did in-depth interviews with 11 participants. Seven described experiencing dissociation while using Chirp.
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  • “But people only realize that they’ve dissociated in hindsight. So once you exit dissociation there’s sometimes this feeling of: How did I get here? It’s like when people on social media realize: ‘Oh my gosh, how did 30 minutes go by? I just meant to check one notification.'”
  • The problem with social media platforms, the researchers said, is not that people lack the self-control needed to not get sucked in, but instead that the platforms themselves are not designed to maximize what people value.
  • These platforms need to create an end-of-use experience, so that people can have it fit in their day with their time-management goals.”
criscimagnael

Explained: Social media and the Texas shooter's messages | Explained News,The Indian Express - 0 views

  • Could technology companies have monitored ominous messages made by a gunman who Texas authorities say massacred 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school? Could they have warned the authorities? Answers to these questions remain unclear
  • But if nothing else, the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, seems highly likely to focus additional attention on how social platforms monitor what users are saying to and showing each other.
  • Shortly thereafter, Facebook stepped in to note that the gunman sent one-to-one direct messages, not public posts, and that they weren’t discovered until “after the terrible tragedy”.
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  • Some reports appear to show that at least some of the gunman’s communications used Apple’s encrypted iPhone messaging services, which makes messages almost impossible for anyone else to read when sent to another iPhone user.
  • Facebook parent company Meta, which also owns Instagram, says it is working with law enforcement but declined to provide details.
  • A series of posts appeared on his Instagram in the days leading up to the shooting, including photos of a gun magazine in hand and two AR-style semi-automatic rifles. An Instagram user who was tagged in one post shared parts of what appears to be a chilling exchange on Instagram with Ramos, asking her to share his gun pictures with her more than 10,000 followers.
  • Meta has said it monitors people’s private messages for some kinds of harmful content, such as links to malware or images of child sexual exploitation. But copied images can be detected using unique identifiers — a kind of digital signature — which makes them relatively easy for computer systems to flag. Trying to interpret a string of threatening words — which can resemble a joke, satire or song lyrics — is a far more difficult task for artificial intelligence systems.
  • Facebook could, for instance, flag certain phrases such as “going to kill” or “going to shoot”, but without context — something AI in general has a lot of trouble with — there would be too many false positives for the company to analyze.
  • A recent Meta-commissioned report emphasized the benefits of such privacy but also noted some risks — including users who could abuse the encryption to sexually exploit children, facilitate human trafficking and spread hate speech.
  • Security experts say this could be done if Apple were to engineer a “backdoor” to allow access to messages sent by alleged criminals. Such a secret key would let them decipher encrypted information with a court order.
peterconnelly

Google's I/O Conference Offers Modest Vision of the Future - The New York Times - 0 views

  • SAN FRANCISCO — There was a time when Google offered a wondrous vision of the future, with driverless cars, augmented-reality eyewear, unlimited storage of emails and photos, and predictive texts to complete sentences in progress.
  • The bold vision is still out there — but it’s a ways away. The professional executives who now run Google are increasingly focused on wringing money out of those years of spending on research and development.
  • The company’s biggest bet in artificial intelligence does not, at least for now, mean science fiction come to life. It means more subtle changes to existing products.
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  • At the same time, it was not immediately clear how some of the other groundbreaking work, like language models that better understand natural conversation or that can break down a task into logical smaller steps, will ultimately lead to the next generation of computing that Google has touted.
  • Much of those capabilities are powered by the deep technological work Google has done for years using so-called machine learning, image recognition and natural language understanding. It’s a sign of an evolution rather than revolution for Google and other large tech giants.
peterconnelly

Your Bosses Could Have a File on You, and They May Misinterpret It - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The company you work for may want to know. Some corporate employers fear that employees could leak information, allow access to confidential files, contact clients inappropriately or, in the extreme, bring a gun to the office.
  • at times using behavioral science tools like psychology.
  • But in spite of worries that workers might be, reasonably, put off by a feeling that technology and surveillance are invading yet another sphere of their lives, employers want to know which clock-punchers may harm their organizations.
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  • “There is so much technology out there that employers are experimenting with or investing in,” said Edgar Ndjatou
  • Software can watch for suspicious computer behavior or it can dig into an employee’s credit reports, arrest records and marital-status updates. It can check to see if Cheryl is downloading bulk cloud data or run a sentiment analysis on Tom’s emails to see if he’s getting testier over time. Analysis of this data, say the companies that monitor insider risk, can point to potential problems in the workplace.
  • Organizations that produce monitoring software and behavioral analysis for the feds also may offer conceptually similar tools to private companies, either independently or packaged with broader cybersecurity tools.
  • But corporations are moving forward with their own software-enhanced surveillance. While private-sector workers may not be subjected to the rigors of a 136-page clearance form, private companies help build these “continuous vetting” technologies for the federal government, said Lindy Kyzer of ClearanceJobs. Then, she adds, “Any solution would have private-sector applications.”
  • “Can we build a system that checks on somebody and keeps checking on them and is aware of that person’s disposition as they exist in the legal systems and the public record systems on a continuous basis?” said Chris Grijalva
  • But the interest in anticipating insider threats in the private sector raises ethical questions about what level of monitoring nongovernmental employees should be subject to.
  • “People are starting to understand that the insider threat is a business problem and should be handled accordingly,” said Mr. Grijalva.
  • The linguistic software package they developed, called SCOUT, uses psycholinguistic analysis to seek flags that, among other things, indicate feelings of disgruntlement, like victimization, anger and blame.
  • “The language changes in subtle ways that you’re not aware of,” Mr. Stroz said.
  • There’s not enough information, in other words, to construct algorithms about trustworthiness from the ground up. And that would hold in either the private or the public sector.
  • Even if all that dystopian data did exist, it would still be tricky to draw individual — rather than simply aggregate — conclusions about which behavioral indicators potentially presaged ill actions.
  • “Depending too heavily on personal factors identified using software solutions is a mistake, as we are unable to determine how much they influence future likelihood of engaging in malicious behaviors,” Dr. Cunningham said.
  • “I have focused very heavily on identifying indicators that you can actually measure, versus those that require a lot of interpretation,” Dr. Cunningham said. “Especially those indicators that require interpretation by expert psychologists or expert so-and-sos. Because I find that it’s a little bit too dangerous, and I don’t know that it’s always ethical.”
kiraagne

Oil Executives Testify on Industry's Role in Climate Disinformation - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Companies touted internal efforts aimed at reducing fossil fuel demand. At the same time, they said their products, the burning of which scientists say are among the dominant drivers of climate change, will remain in use for many years to come.
  • The hearings mark the first time oil executives will be pressed to answer questions, under oath, about whether their companies misled the public about the reality of climate change by obscuring the scientific consensus:
  • compare the inquiry with the tobacco hearings of the 1990s,
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  • As recently as 2000, Exxon Mobil advertised in The New York Times that “scientists have been unable to confirm” that the burning of oil, gas and coal caused climate change. However, a decade before that, scientists had confirmed that the planet had warmed by 0.5 degrees Celsius over the previous century because of fossil fuel-driven greenhouse gases.
  • Most oil and gas industry players have publicly supported the Paris climate agreement.
  • But overall, future mining and drilling plans around the world would produce more than twice as much oil, gas and coal through 2030 as would be needed if governments want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels
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