Category «Internet»

Google News is broken

Charged: “Particularly as Facebook traffic began cratering, leaving publishers scrambling to find new sources of traffic. What’s never really discussed, however, is how those platforms work, and how news sources end up getting mountains of traffic from them, let alone approved for them in the first place. Google News is one of the biggest news …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines

Decoding Algorithms

Macalester Today – “Ada Lovelace probably didn’t foresee the impact of the mathematical formula she published in 1843, now considered the first computer algorithm. Nor could she have anticipated today’s widespread use of algorithms, in applications as different as the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and Mac’s first-year seminar registration. “Over the last decade algorithms have …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management

AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform – Call It Mirrorworld

Wired: “The mirrorworld doesn’t yet fully exist, but it is coming. Someday soon, every place and thing in the real world—every street, lamppost, building, and room—will have its full-size digital twin in the mirrorworld. For now, only tiny patches of the mirrorworld are visible through AR headsets. Piece by piece, these virtual fragments are being …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Privacy

The government is using the wrong data to make crucial decisions about the internet

Recode – Bad maps mean federal money isn’t being spent where it should be to build out broadband connectivity. “High-speed internet is not really available where the government says it is. And that misinformation means that a lot of Americans, especially those in poor and rural areas, can’t get access to broadband — a service …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management

Microsoft really doesn’t want you to use Internet Explorer anymore

The Verge: “Microsoft killed off the Internet Explorer brand nearly four years ago, choosing Edge as its modern browser for Windows 10. Internet Explorer lived on as plumbing for Windows and for business compatibility, but Microsoft isn’t supporting it with new web standards – it’s legacy code. Chris Jackson, a cybersecurity expert in Microsoft’s Windows …

Subjects: Cybersecurity, Internet, Microsoft

Sherlock at scale: Law enforcement enters the connected age

GNC: “Crime is common,” Sherlock Holmes said in the 1892 novel, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. “Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.” Holmes famously used his intellect to make deductions about crimes and solve them. For him, logic was the linchpin, helping …

Subjects: Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Why data, not privacy, is the real danger

NBCNews: “While it’s creepy to imagine companies are listening in to your conversations, it’s perhaps more creepy that they can predict what you’re talking about without actually listening…First, understand that privacy and data are separate things. Your privacy — your first and last name, your Social Security number, your online credentials — is the unit …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Commerce, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

Want to Really Block the Tech Giants? Here’s How

Gizmodo: “Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple move more money than many medium-sized nations. Their extraordinary profits are won through extraordinary reach—this is not a secret. That a few companies are afforded unprecedented and shamefully unregulated access into our homes is now an unremarkable fact of living with tiny computers everywhere. When Gizmodo reporter Kashmir …

Subjects: E-Mail, Internet, Knowledge Management, Privacy, Social Media

T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data

and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country – via Motherboard: “…Motherboard’s investigation shows just how exposed mobile networks and the data they generate are, leaving them open to surveillance by ordinary citizens, stalkers, and criminals, …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Internet, Privacy

Sometimes Google Books scans pictures of human hands along with the book pages

Wired: “Google Books contains more than 25 million volumes, disembodied like spirits from their spines. The individual titles are digitized by data entry workers who flip the pages for machines, working so quickly their hands and fingers sometimes get caught by the scans. These glitches, collected in Andrew Norman Wilson’s Scan Ops, reveal the old-school …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

The Rise of the Robot Reporter

The New York Times: “As reporters and editors find themselves the victims of layoffs at digital publishers and traditional newspaper chains alike, journalism generated by machine is on the rise. Roughly a third of the content published by Bloomberg News uses some form of automated technology. The system used by the company, Cyborg, is able …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management