IN 2010, FOURSQUARE cofounder Naveen Selvadurai believed that his company, and several other social-media upstarts—Twitter, Tumblr, Path—could carve out successful niches against Facebook. But Facebook had other plans. That year the company introduced a feature that allowed users to “check in” at any location, Source: Wired Magazine Date: October 27th, 2017 Link: https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-aggressive-moves-on-startups-threaten-innovation/ Discussion 1) “It’s really fun to work” on consumer Internet… Read more »
Monthly Archives: October 2017
Russian troll sites kept online by American companies
The use of American companies to push Russian propaganda goes beyond social media sites like Facebook. Russians also used American internet services to keep their websites up and hide their true owners, according to internet records and two executives at internet routing companies interviewed by CNN. Source: CNN Technology News Date: October 26th, 2017 Link: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/25/media/itl-green-floid-cloudflare-russian-sites/index.html Discussion 1)… Read more »
Google DeepMind: AI becomes more alien
Google’s DeepMind says it has made another big advance in artificial intelligence by getting a machine, AlphaGo Zero, to master the Chinese game of Go without help from human players. The combinations available in the game Go number more than there are atoms in the universe making it one of the most complex games out… Read more »
Does Saudi robot citizen have more rights than women?
Meet Sophia, a robot who made her first public appearance in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh on Monday. Sophia was such a hit she was immediately given Saudi citizenship in front of hundreds of delegates at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on 25 October. Sophia, created by Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, addressed the audience in English… Read more »
Your browser could be mining cryptocurrency for a stranger
THERE’S SOMETHING NEW to add to your fun mental list of invisible internet dangers. Joining classic favorites like adware and spyware comes a new, tricky threat called “cryptojacking,” which secretly uses your laptop or mobile device to mine cryptocurrency when you visit an infected site. Malicious miners aren’t new in themselves, but cryptojacking has exploded in popularity… Read more »
Could Estonia be the first “digital country”?
Estonia says it’s the first country in the world to offer “e-residency” – granting anyone in the world a digital government ID and access to online services. Source: BBC Future News Date: October 20th, 2017 Link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171019-could-estonia-be-the-first-digital-country Discussion 1) “in 2007, an infamous crisis in which Russia waged what’s considered the first cyberwar on Estonia. Banks had their servers… Read more »
‘Tell me phone, what’s destroying my crops?’
Voruganti Surendra is a farmer who grows paddy rice on an acre of farmland in Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. He and hundreds of his fellow farmers are using a new app that can recognise a growing number of crop pests and diseases and give advice on how to treat them. “It is very useful,” he says. “Farmers… Read more »
Can we teach robots ethics?
We are not used to the idea of machines making ethical decisions, but the day when they will routinely do this – by themselves – is fast approaching. So how, asks the BBC’s David Edmonds, will we teach them to do the right thing? Source: BBC Technology Date: October 17th, 2017 Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41504285 Discussion 1) “The best way… Read more »
Amazon’s Clever Solution to Stolen Deliveries: Your Trunk
A recent study suggests that nearly eight out of 10 Americans shop online. This is a boon for companies like Amazon that specialize in home delivery, but also for more unsavory enterprises—including the crooks who specialize in swiping people’s packages. Source: Fortune Magazine Date: October 10th, 2017 Link: http://fortune.com/2017/10/10/amazon-phrame/ Discussion 1) “the solution involves Amazon working with a maker of… Read more »
Inside Cuba’s D.I.Y. Internet Revolution
Source: Wired Magazine Date: October 10th. 2017 Link: https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revolution/ Discussion 1) “Every week, more than a terabyte of data is packaged into external hard drives known as el paquete semanal (“the weekly package”). It is the internet distilled down to its purest, most consumable, and least interactive form: its content. This collection of video, song, photo, and text files… Read more »
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