ReHacked vol. 277: How the Rise of the Camera Launched a Fight to Protect Gilded Age Americans' Privacy, Meta trains its AI with public Instagram posts and more
How the Rise of the Camera Launched a Fight to Protect Gilded Age Americans' Privacy | Smithsonian #privacy #copyrights #history
Early photographers sold their snapshots to advertisers, who reused the individuals’ likenesses without their permission.
In 1904, a widow named Elizabeth Peck had her portrait taken at a studio in a small Iowa town. The photographer sold the negatives to Duffy’s Pure Malt Whiskey, a company that avoided liquor taxes for years by falsely advertising its product as medicinal. Duffy’s ads claimed the fantastical: that it cured everything from influenza to consumption, that it was endorsed by clergymen, that it could help you live until the age of 106. The portrait of Peck ended up in one of these dubious ads, published in newspapers across the country alongside what appeared to be her unqualified praise: “After years of constant use of your Pure Malt Whiskey, both by myself and as given to patients in my capacity as nurse, I have no hesitation in recommending it.”
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What is the significance of the character "j" at the end of a Roman Numeral? - Genealogy & Family History Stack Exchange #history #interesting
chatgpt: "In historical documents, particularly from the 16th and early 17th centuries, the letter "j" at the end of Roman numerals was used to distinguish the final "i" and prevent fraud. For example, "xvij" instead of "xvii" for 17 and "xxij" instead of "xxii" for 22. This practice ensured clarity and accuracy in handwritten records."
Google’s shortened links will stop working next year - The Verge #software #internet
Ahead of the shutdown, goo.gl links will start showing an interstitial page on August 23rd, 2024, notifying users that “this link will no longer work in the near future.” This message will initially appear for a “percentage of existing links,’’ which will increase as the deadline draws closer. Google is encouraging developers to update impacted links as soon as possible, however, as this interstitial page may cause disruptions to link redirections.
2024-07-20 minuteman missile communications #longread
Official data: over a million Cubans migrated in two years | Miami Herald #world
The numbers released by the government might be a “very conservative” estimate of the crisis, Duany said.
He cited a recent paper published by the Cuban Research Institute and written by Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, a professor at the University of Havana, that estimates the real population decrease was 18 percent, to 8.62 million, between 2022 and 2023.
Fraga, the official sharing the new data, said the latest population count was calculated by applying the new definition of “effective residence,” which is included in a new migration law proposal approved by the National Assembly on Friday. The official explained that his office counted in the current population Cubans who spent at least 181 days on the island each calendar year to arrive at the “effective population” figure.
The European Union must keep funding free software - HedgeDoc #software #copyrights
While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can’t afford this renunciation.
Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration.
This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover Discovers a Surprise in a Martian Rock #nature #space
Among several recent findings, the rover has found rocks made of pure sulfur — a first on the Red Planet.
Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals.
Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals — in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials — the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental, or pure, sulfur. It isn’t clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.
Features - Java's Megalithic Mountain - Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2024 #history #longread
The question of who built the megalithic structures of Gunung Padang and when has been the subject of much debate since they were recorded in 1914 by Dutch archaeologist N.J. Krom. Local stories link the site with medieval Hindu figures such as the semi-mythical King Siliwangi. The king is believed to have been inspired by Sri Baduga Maharaja, a historical figure who ruled one of the last Hindu kingdoms in western Java from about 1482 to 1521. According to one legend, King Siliwangi built Gunung Padang in a single night. Less fanciful accounts ascribe the megaliths’ construction to prehistoric people. Some researchers in the twentieth century suggested the site could have been built as early as 2500 B.C. More recently, a team of geologists who investigated Gunung Padang using remote sensing concluded that the mountain conceals much older structures. They believe these structures could have been built as early as the Paleolithic era, more than 20,000 years ago. Most Indonesian archaeologists are highly skeptical of this claim, since there is considerable evidence that the people who lived on the Indonesian archipelago at that time were hunter-gatherers who did not build significant stone structures. A paper published in Archaeological Prospection in 2023 by the geologists was recently retracted by the journal’s editors. A review of the geologists’ data showed that radiocarbon dates from soil cores used to support their interpretation were taken from samples of natural soil, not from layers with evidence of a human presence.
Collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Design #design
Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study - ABC News #health #nature
House sparrows are ubiquitous in most towns across Australia and live "very intimately" with people, Professor Griffith said.
"They literally will spend their life living in people's front yards, backyards, nesting under people's eaves, and they actually have quite a small territory."
The birds inhale and ingest chemicals and compounds in their environment, including lead-contaminated dust — just as people do, he added.
"If you think about young kids playing in a park or the garden, they are just as intimately associated with the dust as a sparrow is on a daily basis."
Glib | Seth's Blog #ai #psychology
One of the valid complaints about some AI systems is that they make stuff up, with confidence, and without sourcing, and then argue when challenged.
Unsurprisingly, this sounds a lot like people.
Meta trains its AI with public Instagram posts. Latin Americans can’t opt out - Rest of World #copyrights #ai #bigcorp
Meta did not notify its users in Latin America about its plans to use their content to train its generative AI model.
Spanish-speaking Latin American countries lack strong data protection laws, leaving Meta users there unable to opt out of the company’s plans.
Artists are particularly vulnerable, as many promote their creative work on Meta’s platforms.
Kenya’s protests played out on walkie-talkie app Zello - Rest of World #world
Thousands of Kenyans used Zello, an app that mimics a walkie-talkie, to coordinate movements and communicate anonymously during recent protests against a controversial bill.
Zello confirmed that the app was downloaded 40,000 times on the Google Play store in Kenya during the week of the protests.
Experts say the app helped make the protests one of the most effective in Kenya’s history.
As part of the wider tech industry's wider push for AI, whether we want it or not, it seems that Google's Gemini AI service is now reading private Drive documents without express user permission, per a report from Kevin Bankster on Twitter embedded below. While Bankster goes on to discuss reasons why this may be glitched for users like him in particular, the utter lack of control being given over his sensitive, private information is unacceptable for a company of Google's stature —and does not bode well for future privacy concerns amongst AI's often-forced rollout.
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