Big Brother Big Business Privacy

Surveillance Capitalism

Councils are sharing your data in the UK with whoever wants it, basically (” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/04/councils-let-firms-track-visits-to-webpages-on-benefits-and-disability “). Wolfie Christl, a technologist and researcher who has been investigating the ad-tech industry, said: “Public sector websites and apps should not use invasive third-party tracking at all.” Johnny Ryan, the chief policy officer at the anonymous web browser Brave, […]

Books

American Caesars

My nomadic friend at work dropped this on my desk a while back before heading to catch a cargo ship out of Kiel. We’d been discussing the madness of Nixon over coffee one day in order to avoid any actual work, and he reckoned I’d enjoy this, and he was right. It’s a riveting overview […]

Health

Good News

For ex-smokers. A limited study has shown some evidence that your lungs can replace smoking-damaged cells over time. The study’s joint senior author, Peter Campbell of the UK-based Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the results should give new hope to smokers who want to quit. “People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years […]

Society

Better or Worse?

Thought provoking: While previously the public’s news consumption was shaped by powerful gatekeepers such as newspaper editors or the bosses of heavily regulated broadcast news channels, on their phones it is shaped more by the hands-off approach of companies such as Facebook. The social network has decided against taking a patrician approach of pushing straightforward […]