Study: Social Media and Young People
July 19, 2017
Some of us elders have been saying it for years, but now research seems to confirm it—social media can be bad for mental health. The Next Web reports, “Study: Snapchat and Instagram Are the Worst for Young People.” The study is from the UK’s Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), and the “young people” sampled are 1,479 Brits aged 14-24. An explanatory three-minute video from the RSPH accompanies the article. Writer Rachel Kaser reports:
The researchers surveyed 1,479 British youths ages 14-24, asking them how they felt the different social media networks effected their mental health. They took in several factors such as body image, sleep deprivation, bullying, and self-identity. The results suggest the two worst social media networks for kids are Instagram and Snapchat, as they had terrible scores for body image, bullying, and anxiety. Twitter and Facebook weren’t much better, though. YouTube was the only one that apparently inspired more positive feelings than negative ones. It could be because Snapchat and Instagram are image-based apps, meaning it’s not easy for users to avoid visual comparisons. Both apps ranked high on ‘Fear of Missing Out,’ and the researchers suggested this was likely to foster anxiety in fellow users.
I recommend the video for interested readers. It shows some respondents’ answers to certain questions, and clearly summarizes the pros and cons of each platform examined. It helpfully concludes with a list of concrete suggestions: Implement pop-up notifications that tell users when they’ve been online for a certain amount of time; require watermarks on photos that have been digitally altered; educate folks on the healthy use of social media; and incorporate analysis tools to identify users at risk for poor mental health and “discreetly” steer them toward help. It does seem such measures could help; will social-media companies cooperate?
Cynthia Murrell, July 19, 2017
Google Abandons Email Ads; Stops Reading User Emails
July 11, 2017
Gmail, the largest email provider, has stopped the email ads program after enterprise customers raised concerns over privacy and enterprise data.
As reported by Bloomberg in an article titled Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads, the author of the article says:
Google is stopping one of the most controversial advertising formats: ads inside Gmail that scan users’ email contents. The decision didn’t come from Google’s ad team, but from its cloud unit, which is angling to sign up more corporate customers.
Launched on in April 2004, Gmail initially was an invitation only email service. As the user base increased, the then parent company Google decided to sell ad space within the mailbox to advertisers based on email contents.
Gmail now will abandon this practice as many corporate clients have enrolled for the paid version of the email named G Suites. The decision came from Diane Greene, who heads the Cloud division of Alphabet, Inc. Alphabet’s dominance over search engine business continues. The next bastion might be Cloud services, as indicated by this move. Right, Google?
Vishal Ingole, July 11, 2017
Deleting Yourself from the Internet Too Good to Be True
July 4, 2017
Most people find themselves saddled with online accounts going back decades and would gladly delete them if they could. Some people even wish they could delete all their accounts and cease to exist online. A new service, Deseat, promises just that. According to The Next Web,
Every account it finds gets paired with an easy delete link pointing to the unsubscribe page for that service. Within in a few clicks you’re freed from it, and depending on how long you need to work through the entire list, you can be unwanted-account-free within the hour.
Theoretically, one could completely erase all trace of themselves from the all-knowing cyber web in the sky. But can it really be this easy?
Yes, eliminating outdated and unused accounts is a much-needed step in cleaning up one’s cyber identity, but we must question the validity of total elimination of one’s cyber identify in just a few clicks. Despite the website’s claim to “wipe your entire existence off the internet in a few clicks” ridding the internet of one’s cyber footprints is probably not that easy.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 4, 2017
Facebook May Be Exploiting Emotions of Young Audiences
June 26, 2017
Open Rights Group, a privacy advocacy group is demanding details of a study Facebook conducted on teens and sold its results to marketing companies. This might be a blatant invasion of privacy and attempt to capitalize on emotional distress of teens.
In a press release sent out by the Open Rights Group and titled Rights Groups Demand More Transparency over Facebook’s ‘Insights’ into Young Users, the spokesperson says:
It is incumbent upon Facebook as a cultural leader to protect, not exploit, the privacy of young people, especially when their vulnerable emotions are involved.
This is not the first time technology companies have come under heavy criticism from privacy rights groups. Facebook through its social media platform collects information and metrics from users, analyzes it and sells the results to marketing companies. However, Facebook never explicitly tells the user that they are being watched. Open Rights Group is demanding that this information is made public. Though there is no hope, will Facebook concede?
Vishal Ingole, June 26, 2017
Privacy Enabled on Digital Assistants
June 8, 2017
One thing that Amazon, Google, and other digital assistant manufacturers glaze over are how enabling vocal commands on smart speakers potentially violates a user’s privacy. These include both the Google Home and the Amazon Echo. Keeping vocal commands continuously on allows bad actors to hack into the smart speaker, listen, record, and spy on users in the privacy of their own homes. If the vocal commands are disabled on smart speakers, it negates their purpose. The Verge reports that one smart technology venture is making an individual’s privacy the top priority: “Essential Home Is An Amazon Echo Competitor Puts Privacy First.”
Andy Rubin’s recently released the Essential Home, essentially a digital assistant that responds to vocal, touch, or “sight” commands. It is supposed to be an entirely new product in the digital assistant ring, but it borrows most of its ideas from Google and Amazon’s innovations. Essential Home just promises to do them better.
Translation: Huh?
What Essential Home is exactly, isn’t clear. Essential has some nice renders showing the concept in action. But we’re not seeing any photos of a working device and nothing in the way of specifications, prices, or delivery dates. We know it’ll act as the interface to your smart home gear but we don’t know which ecosystems will be supported. We know it runs Ambient OS, though details on that are scant. We know it’ll try to alert you of contextually relevant information during the day, but it’s unclear how.
It is compatible with Nest, SmartThings, and HomeKit and it is also supposed to be friendly with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. The biggest selling feature might be this:
Importantly, we do know that most of the processing will happen locally on the device, not in the cloud, keeping the bulk of your data within the home. This is exactly what you’d expect from a company that’s not in the business of selling ads, or everything else on the planet.
Essentially, keeping user data locally might be a bigger market player in the future than we think. The cloud might appeal to more people, however, because it is a popular buzzword. What is curious is how Essential Home will respond to commands other than vocal. They might not be relying on a similar diamond in the rough concept that propelled Bitext to the front of the computational linguistics and machine learning market.
Whitney Grace, June 8, 2017
UK Big Brother Invades More Privacy
April 18, 2017
The United Kingdom has been compared to George Orwell’s 1984 dystopia before, especially in the last two decades with their increasing amount of surveillance technology. Once more UK citizens face privacy invasion reports the Guardian in “UK Public Faces Mass Invasion Of Privacy As Big Data And Surveillance Merge.” The UK’s Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter expressed his worry that government regulators were unable to keep up with technological advances.
Big data combined with video surveillance, facial recognition technology, and the profuse use of more cameras is making it harder to protect individuals’ privacy. People are being recorded 24/7 and often without their knowledge. Another worry is that police are not being vigilant with private information. One example is that license plate information has not been deleted after the two-year limit.
Porter wants changes to be made in policies and wants people to be aware of the dangers:
Porter’s new strategy, published on Tuesday, points out that an overwhelming majority of people currently support the use of CCTV in public places. But he questions whether this support can continue because of the way surveillance is changing.
‘I’m worried about overt surveillance becoming much more invasive because it is linked to everything else,’ Porter said. ‘You might have a video photograph of somebody shopping in Tesco. Now it is possible to link that person to their pre-movements, their mobile phone records, any sensor detectors within their house or locality. As smart cities move forward, these are challenges are so much greater for people like myself. And members of the public need to decide whether they are still happy with this.’
Porter admitted that advanced surveillance technology had allowed law enforcement to arrest terrorists and track down missing people, but it still can lead to worse privacy invasions. Porter hopes is new three-year strategy will inform authorities about how technology will impact privacy.
The good thing about surveillance technology is how it can track down bad guys, but it can be harmful to innocent citizens. The BBC should run some PSAs about video surveillance and privacy to keep their citizens informed. I suggest they do not make them as scary as this one about electricity.
Whitney Grace, April 18, 2017
Whose Message Is It Anyway?
April 11, 2017
Instant messaging service provider WhatsApp is in a quandary. While privacy of its users is of utmost importance to them, where do they draw the line if it’s a question of national security?
In an editorial published in The Telegraph titled WhatsApp Accused of Giving Terrorists ‘a Secret Place to Hide’ as It Refuses to Hand over London Attacker’s Messages, the writer says:“The Government was considering legislation to force online firms to take down extremist material, but said it was time for the companies to “recognise that they have a responsibility” to get their own house in order.
Apps like WhatsApp offer end-to-end encryption for messages sent using its network. This makes it impossible (?) for anyone to intercept and read them, even technicians at WhatsApp. On numerous occasions, WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has come under fire for protecting its user privacy. In this particular incident, the London attacker Ajao used WhatsApp to send message to someone. While Soctland Yard wants access to the messages sent by the terrorist, WhatsApp says its hands are tied.
The editorial also says that social media networks are no more tech companies, rather they are turning into publishing companies thus the onus is on them to ensure the radical materials are also removed from their networks. Who ultimately will win the battle remains to be seen, but right now, WhatsApp seems to have the edge.
Vishal Ingole, April 11, 2017
Intelligence Industry Becoming Privatized and Concentrated
March 10, 2017
Monopolies aren’t just for telecoms and zipper manufacturers. The Nation reveals a much scarier example in its article, “5 Corporations Now Dominate Our Privatized Intelligence Industry.” Reporter Tim Shorrock outlines the latest merger that brings us to this point, one between Pentagon & NSA contractor Leidos Holdings and a division of Lockheed Martin called Information Systems and Global Solutions. Shorrock writes:
The sheer size of the new entity makes Leidos one of the most powerful companies in the intelligence-contracting industry, which is worth about $50 billion today. According to a comprehensive study I’ve just completed on public and private employment in intelligence, Leidos is now the largest of five corporations that together employ nearly 80 percent of the private-sector employees contracted to work for US spy and surveillance agencies.
Yes, that’s 80 percent. For the first time since spy agencies began outsourcing their core analytic and operational work in the late 1990s, the bulk of the contracted work goes to a handful of companies: Leidos, Booz Allen Hamilton, CSRA, SAIC, and CACI International. This concentration of ‘pure plays’—a Wall Street term for companies that makes one product for a single market—marks a fundamental shift in an industry that was once a highly diverse mix of large military contractors, small and medium technology companies, and tiny ‘Beltway Bandits’ surrounding Washington, D.C.
I should mention that our beloved leader, Stephen E Arnold, used to work as a gopher for one of these five companies, Booz Allen Hamilton. Shorrock details the reasons such concentrated power is a problem in the intelligence industry, and shares the profile he has made on each company. He also elaborates on the methods he used to analyze the shadowy workforce they employ. (You’ll be unsurprised to learn it can be difficult to gather data on intelligence workers.) See the article for those details, and for Shorrock’s discussion of negligence by the media and by Congress on this matter. We can agree that most folks don’t seem to be aware of this trend, or of its potential repercussions.
Cynthia Murrell, March 10, 2016
ScyllaDB Version 3.1 Available
March 8, 2017
According to Scylla, their latest release is currently the fastest NoSQL database. We learn about the update from SiliconAngle’s article, “ScyllaDB Revamps NoSQL Database in 1.3 Release.” To support their claim, the company points to a performance benchmark test executed by the Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark project. That group compared ScyllaDB to the open source Cassandra database, and found Scylla to be 4.6 times faster than a standard Cassandra cluster.
Writer Mike Wheatley elaborates on the product:
ScyllaDB’s biggest differentiator is that it’s compatible with the Apache Cassandra database APIs. As such, the creators claims that ScyllaDB can be used as a drop-in replacement for Cassandra itself, offering users the benefit of improved performance and scale that comes from the integration with a light key/value store.
The company says the new release is geared towards development teams that have struggled with Big Data projects, and claims a number of performance advantages over more traditional development approach, including:
*10X throughput of baseline Cassandra – more than 1,000,000 CQL operations per second per node
*Sub 1msec 99% latency
*10X per-node storage capacity over Cassandra
*Self-tuning database: zero configuration needed to max out hardware
*Unparalleled high availability, native multi-datacenter awareness
*Drop-in replacement for Cassandra – no additional scripts or code required”
Wheatley cites Scylla’s CTO when he points to better integration with graph databases and improved support for Thrift, Date Tiered Compaction Strategy, Large Partitions, Docker, and CQL tracing. I notice the company is hiring as of this writing. Don’t let the Tel Aviv location of Scylla’s headquarters stop from applying you if you don’t happen to live nearby—they note that their developers can work from anywhere in the world.
Cynthia Murrell, March 8, 2016
Parlez Vous Qwant, Nest-Ce Pas?
March 2, 2017
One of Google’s biggest rivals is Yandex, at least in Russia. Yandex is a Russian owned and operated search engine and is more popular in Russia than the Google, depending on the statistics. It goes to say that a search engine built and designed by native speakers does have a significant advantage over foreign competition, and it looks like France wants a chance to beat Google. Search Engine Journal reports that, “Qwant, A French Search Engine, Thinks It Can Take On Google-Here’s Why.”
Qwant was only founded in 2013 and it has grown to serve twenty-one million monthly users in thirty countries. The French search engine has seen a 70% growth each year and it will see more with its recent integration with Firefox and a soon-to-be launched mobile app. Qwant is very similar to DuckDuckGo in that it does not collect user data. It also boasts mote search categories than news, images, and video and these include, music, social media, cars, health, music, and others. Qwant had an interesting philosophy:
The company also has a unique philosophy that artificial intelligence and digital assistants can be educated without having to collect data on users. That’s a completely different philosophy than what is shared by Google, which collects every bit of information it can about users to fuel things like Google Home and Google Allo.
Qwant still wants to make a profit with pay-per-click and future partnerships with eBay and TripAdvisor, but they will do without compromising a user’s privacy. Qwant has a unique approach to search and building AI assistants, but it has a long way to go before it reaches Google heights.
They need to engage more users not only on laptops and computers but also mobile devices. They also need to form more partnerships with other browsers.
Bon chance, Qwant! But could you share how you plan to make AI assistants without user data?
Whitney Grace, March 2, 2017
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