privacy
privacy
With Brits Used to Surveillance, More Companies Try Tracking Faces
Companies use UK’s omnipresent security cameras as cultural permission to bring facial-recognition tech to semi-public spaces, tracking criminal history but also ethnicity and other personal traits.
apple
Apple Used to Know Exactly What People Wanted — Then It Made a Watch
In The New York Times, John Herrmann observes that it’s not yet clear how Apple Watch’s health-tracking delivers value—or for whom.
facebook
Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information
At Gizmodo, Kashmir Hill describes how your friends inadvertently give up your data to companies even when you don’t participate in their service.
google
Google Data Collection Research
A study of Android phones found that Google collects location information 340 times during a 24-hour period from a dormant stationary phone. It goes way up with actual interaction.
iphone
The iPhone’s original UI designer on Apple’s greatest flaws
In an interview with Imran Chaudhri, the iPhone interface’s original designer says Apple knew the phone would be distracting and attention-soaking—and chose to bury the controls to make it less so.
ai
AI Guesses Whether You're Gay or Straight from a Photo
The algorithm could correctly distinguish between gay and straight men 81% of the time, and 74% for women.
ai
Federated Learning: Collaborative Machine Learning without Centralized Training Data
Google has begun offloading some of its machine learning to mobile devices to keep your private data… private.
privacy
There’s Nowhere to Hide on the Internet
The New Yorker describes what it’s like to use Internet Noise, “a kind of digital squid ink,” to garbage-up your search history for advertisers and other snoopers.
security
Set Up Your Own Private VPN with Streisand
This remarkable software project gives you a private VPN service with easy setup at low cost and zero maintenance.
physical ui
Companies Start Implanting Microchips Into Workers’ Bodies
The AP reports that the convenience/privacy tradeoff is literally getting under workers’ skin.