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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecuritySecurity Researcher’s ‘NULL’ Vanity Plates Cause Glitch That Lands Him $12,000 in Parking Tickets
You can’t put a price tag on the value of sticking it to the man—specifically, trying to own an official surveillance system. Except maybe when you are owned right back. A security researcher going by the name of Droogie attempted to fuck with Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems by customizing a vanity California license … Continued
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Tech NewsThe White House Readies Draft of Executive Order That Could Break the Internet
It appears the Trump administration is drafting an executive order that has the potential to radically change how the content posted on social networks are governed, stripping crucial protections from tech companies and inserting much more government oversight. This is being done under the guise of a popular political talking point claiming that social media … Continued
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Tech NewsTeen Students Forced to Work Overtime Building Amazon Echo Devices In China
In July, a 17-year-old high school student in China was sticking protective film over 3,000 Amazon Echo dots a day at the Foxconn factory in Hengyang. She was working ten hours a day and six days a week. And she was among more than 1,000 students employed by the factory to work overtime on Amazon’s … Continued
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Tech NewsPolice in the Philippines Investigating 8chan and Its Owner Following El Paso Shooting
After a gunman opened fire at an El Paso Walmart on Saturday killing 22, and a manifesto posted online believed to be written by the shooter exalted previous mass shootings and referenced the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” the link between real-world violence and extremist forums is being further scrutinized. Most recently, police in the Philippines … Continued
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Tech NewsElizabeth Warren Has a Plan To Counter Evil ISPs With Public Broadband
Not everyone in the US has access to the internet, and that’s largely because the internet service providers that govern these systems are money-hungry, discriminatory, and, frankly, evil. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has a plan to strip some of that power away from ISPs through the creation of publicly-owned broadband. On Wednesday, Senator Warren published … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogle Fixed Its Algorithm So That Lesbian-Related Searches Are Less Pornographic
Google is one of the most powerful and popular search engines, but that oftentimes doesn’t conflate to being free from flawed results. And when a French news site and Twitter account campaigned against the sexualized search results for the word “lesbienne,” Google claimed that it fixed its algorithm. In June, French news site Numerana found … Continued
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Tech NewsTech PolicyDomino’s Could Fuck Up the Internet for People With Disabilities Because They Won’t Just Fix Their Website
In 2016, Guillermo Robles sued Domino’s because the pizza chain’s website and app didn’t work with screen-reading software, making their online services inaccessible to him and other users with visual impairment. Robles, who is blind, claimed that on at least two occasions, he was unable to order a custom pizza from the company’s website, so … Continued
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Tech NewsSocial Networks Should Design Their Platforms With More Gratitude In Mind
The role social networks play in affording a space for hateful and violent content has been put on disturbing display in recent times as these diatribes are directly connected to unimaginable acts of inhumanity. It’s hard not to see the throughline from these online forums to real-world atrocities. But researchers are exploring how the design … Continued
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Tech NewsU.S. Senators Urge Google to End Its Shitty Treatment of Contract Workers
Google depends deeply on its contractors, but a series of damning reports indicate that while these workers make up around half of the company and are tasked with essential work, they are largely treated as second-class citizens. In response, a group of U.S. senators wrote a letter to the tech giant in late July calling it … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityNew Bill Would Give Voters the Right to Know What Data a Political Campaign Has About Them
The Cambridge Analytica scandal around the 2016 U.S. presidential election remains one of the most astonishing revelations of not only the breadth of data social networks collect about us and our friends but how this data can be used to psychologically manipulate us. It was an unsettling insight into how what seems like harmless hanging … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityFacial Recognition System for Getting Drunk More Efficiently Is Coming
Facial recognition systems have, to date, proven to be biased, unjust, flawed, and deeply powerful. They’ve been deployed as tools of surveillance, oppression, and authoritarianism. And now one is going to track your drunk ass at the bar. The system, called “AI Bar,” was developed by British data science company DataSparQ, and it uses facial … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityAnother U.S. City Moves to Ban Face Recognition, Citing Threats to Free Speech and Civil Rights [Corrected]
On Tuesday, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts moved one step closer to prohibiting local government from using facial recognition. Three other cities in the country have already instituted such bans over concerns that the technology is biased and violates basic human rights. In December of last year, the Cambridge City Council passed the Surveillance Technology … Continued
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Tech NewsSenator Moves to Make Autoplay Videos and Infinite Scroll Illegal
That technology might be bad for our health, that it’s manipulating us, isn’t a revelatory take, but it’s one that lawmakers are increasingly becoming intimately entwined with. And a new bill wants to prevent social networks from exploiting us. Senator Josh Hawley introduced the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, or SMART Act, on Tuesday, … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityHow Hong Kong’s Protestors Are Hindering (and Hijacking) the Tools of Surveillance
Simply moving through the physical world in regions with massive, powerful surveillance systems threatens to strip one of their anonymity, and in places with anti-government demonstrations, that threat is disturbingly amplified. But protestors in Hong Kong are countering these gross invasions of privacy. In Hong Kong, hundreds of thousands of civilians are estimated to have … Continued
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Tech NewsYouTube Says It’s Not for Kids, but New Study Suggests That’s Bullshit
Going down a YouTube rabbit hole is a dangerous game—even if you successfully avoid its cesspool of hateful and illegal content, you’re bound to stumble into another cesspool altogether. And worryingly, according to new Pew Research Center analysis, a large chunk of the most popular content revolves around children. The study, “A Week in the … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial IntelligenceThousands of Reasons That We Shouldn’t Trust a Neural Network to Analyze Images
When it comes to image recognition tech, it’s still remarkably easy to fool the machines. And while it’s some good comedy when a neural network mistakes a butterfly for a washing machine, the consequences of this idiocy are pretty nightmarish when you think about rolling these flawed systems out into the real world. Researchers from … Continued
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Tech NewsThe Gates Foundation Is Filling Its Coffers With Profits From Private Prisons
For soulless ghouls who view the bottom line as superior to basic human rights, for-profit prisons are an apt investment, one that the investment arm of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just increased its stake in. As first reported by Bloomberg, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust—a separate organization from the Bill and … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityResearchers Reveal That Anonymized Data Is Easy To Reverse Engineer
Merely existing in the modern world means giving up a wealth of your information to countless institutions and services. While many of the places make promises to keep your identifiable data as secure and private as possible, they can still—and oftentimes do—share anonymized versions of your data to third parties, whether that’s for research or … Continued
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ScienceHealthDoctors Warn That Inaccurate At-Home Cancer Screenings Are Causing Misguided Panic
Medical tests can be scary and expensive, so providing someone the option to non-invasively and more affordably find out if they are at risk for cancer from the comfort of their home is an enticing offer. But doctors are pointing out that these at-home kits aren’t always accurate, and patients are coming in for major … Continued
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Tech NewsCommerceTest of Amazon’s Face Recognition by Orlando Cops Ends as a Devastating Flop
Orlando has ended its pilot trial of Rekognition, Amazon’s face recognition system, with no current plans for future tests. But the city hasn’t suddenly had a change of heart due to ethical concerns about the technology—they reportedly just couldn’t get it to work. Back in October, the city began a nine-month trial of Rekognition with … Continued
Melanie Ehrenkranz
Melanie Ehrenkranz's posts