technology

Talking tech; debates about regulating technology, privacy laws, piracy, and the pitfalls of AI.

Hacked, Haggard, Hooked
There's a war happening in the world that is so covert, so deeply embedded, so insidious, we ride the surface, blissfully unaware of it's impact.
By Dannielle Nelson4 years ago in The Swamp
Get verified and explore Fet Life's new facial recognition system.
There is a reason why Facebook and many others have stopped doing this. Facial recognition systems harm people in the community. But face recognition, the technology behind these features, is more than just a gimmick. It is employed for law enforcement surveillance, airport passenger screening, and employment and housing decisions. Despite widespread adoption, face recognition was recently banned for use by police and local agencies in several cities, including Boston and San Francisco. Why? Of the dominant biometrics in use (fingerprint, iris, palm, voice, and face), face recognition is the least accurate and is rife with privacy concerns. Police use face recognition to compare suspects’ photos to mugshots and driver’s license images; it is estimated that almost half of American adults – over 117 million people, as of 2016 – have photos within a facial recognition network used by law enforcement. This participation occurs without consent, or even awareness, and is bolstered by a lack of legislative oversight. Face recognition empowers a law enforcement system with a long history of racist and anti-activist surveillance and can widen pre-existing inequalities. I do not support this as part of Fet Life and it will out others as not even credit card companies are safe from getting hacked. This is a bad idea and bad for the global community to particpate with.
By Joseph Crown4 years ago in The Swamp
Work in the Twenty-First Century
Labor Day got me thinking about the world of work in America. So many people are pontificating about how the pandemic will change work in the future. Many of these people are employers trying to decide whether they want employees back in office or if work from home (WFH) will be more common even after COVID. Hybrid models are being tried out in some work environments, models which have employees spending part of the work week on site and the rest of the week spent working from home. There are discussions about 4-day work weeks once again, and shorter work hours. When commuting to work was interrupted, the WFH model, which we did not think we were ready for, became an important way to work, take care of family needs, and stay healthy.
By Nancy Brisson4 years ago in The Swamp
Labor Day 2021
This week began with Labor Day which always puts my mind on my father. Dad earned the nickname “Brain” because, had he not been born into a poor family just at the edge of the Great Depression, his intelligence might have led to a very different life than the one he lived. He had to drop out of school after eighth grade to go to work in order to help support his mother and father. He found a job at the Easy Washer plant in Syracuse, NY. I know he worked there for at least 15 years, beginning when he was thirteen. Easy Washer made wringer washing machines. I also know that he worked there right through WWII, doing essential war work.
By Nancy Brisson4 years ago in The Swamp
Media Law and Ethics
Nowadays media has gained more importance than ever due to the increased interconnectivity between regions because of globalization. Sharing of information and knowledge has become a pillar in a more closely knit modern world. However, the significance of the media in its roles in social, economic, and overall development calls for ethics and discipline. Rao said that an unregulated media with no ethics would be disastrous not only to the social freedom, but also its own independence. Therefore, the need to have media laws that govern and guide the media as well as an ethical framework for the media cannot be underestimated. While the laws governing the media differ from one country to the other due to the diversities, the bottom line is the regulation of sharing information to ensure that it serves the interest of the consumers and general social wellbeing. In advanced democracies such as the US, media laws and ethical standards are higher and more developed, while emerging economies that have gained global recognition such as the UAE have also become significant. This paper will provide an overview of the media laws and ethics in the United States and United Arab Emirates and compare the situations in the two countries before making recommendations on how to improve the overall benefits that the society can reap from a responsible and ethically sound media in the United Arab Emirates.
By MiaGreen5 years ago in The Swamp
Information is Treachery
A computer can not read - that's simply not one of its gifts. It can't see a picture, either, or listen to a song or watch a film. What a computer sees - insofar as it can be said to "see" anything - is an endless world of switches, some on, some off. Yet within those switches are patterns, some of which correspond to stories, pictures, songs or films. At command, a computer can take those switches and perfectly recreate these things, telling stories it hasn't the means to understand.
By Andrew Johnston5 years ago in The Swamp
Why The Tech Revolution Is The Best Thing Yet To Happen To Nigeria
When In 2016, the former president of the Nigeria came out to say that he created 25 billionaires ( in dollars, by the way) and Africa's wealthiest woman - Folorunsho Alakija was among them - It came as no surprise to the vast majority of the educated class; the wealthiest 0.00000012% owed their vast fortunes, not to hard work, not to being the best qualified, but to their political connections - close friends in high places.
By Adebayo Adeniran5 years ago in The Swamp
Can Blockchain be the Future of Democratic Voting?
Introduction The invention of the distributed database, otherwise known as the ‘blockchain’ was a revolution in the technical sphere. Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown inventor of Bitcoin, realised you could solve the double-spend problem of digital currency by having a distributed database. But these distributed databases have far more potential than just recording transaction histories. What if you could use it to decide election results? Election fraud could become a thing of the past.
By Jacob5 years ago in The Swamp
Have governments kept up with the digital age?
Have governments kept up with the digital revolution? Are we all still governed by ”pen and paper” administrations, while living in the digital age?
By Peter Rose5 years ago in The Swamp
A Revolution Against Big Tech
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” - John F Kennedy
By Jason A5 years ago in The Swamp
Live News Stream: A New Way To Watch The News
The news channels have learnt how to market their content and reach a global audience. Live news streaming is a powerful way of obtaining the global audience. It will have a good reach if the content of theirs is the talk of the town.
By Medusa Hornia5 years ago in The Swamp
After Huawei, TikTok also goes to the ban: so Trump attacks China
It is written Huawei, but basically it reads China. That behind the now famous ban imposed by Donald Trump against the Shenzhen technology company there is a plan to break China's wings seems now the secret of puffin. And in the last few hours a hypothesis is taking hold that would reinforce this scenario. According to reports from the Financial Times, in fact, the White House is considering very seriously the possibility of adding ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to the famous "blacklist" (which already includes Huawei). The short video social network, with over 2 billion downloads across the West and around 800 million daily active users, is probably the digital platform with the highest growth rates in the world. And the fact that he is Chinese is seen by Trump as a major threat to the United States.
By Marco Bonomo5 years ago in The Swamp