Very interesting keynote by Tommaso Venturini at the iNovaMediaLab titled “What do we See when We look at Networks.” In his talk he remarks how networks have become the metaphor of connected complexity and explains how they should be a tool to make sense of this complexity.
Two interesting articles from Wired dealing with current sociotechnical controversies:
In het volgende interview met VPRO Tegenlicht vertelt de Duitse filosoof over het begrip vrijheid in onze hedendaagse samenleving. Erg interessant is zijn uitleg rond minuut 7 over hoe mensen zich niet zozeer persoonlijk geraakt voelen door een toename aan staatscontrole. Hij geeft een passend voorbeeld hoe de controle in luchthaven ordinair is geworden en we het accepetern omdat er nu eenmaal bijhoort. Volgens hem is dit voorbeeld passend voor hoe we dagelijks met zulke beperkingen in vrijheid omgaan.
An article from CNET reports on the use of “keyword warrants” in police investigations the US:
Typically, probable cause is needed for search warrants, which are associated with a suspect or address. The demands for information are narrowly tailored to a specific individual. Keyword warrants go against that concept by giving up data on a large group of people associated with searching for certain phrases.
Apparently the U.K. was not undercounting COVID-19 cases in the country due issues with the Excel file format they were using.
According to the BBC, the error was caused by the fact that Public Health England developers stored the test results in the file format known as .XLS. These .XLS files were then sent to the NHS after uploading to a central system. .XLS is an outdated file format, however, and each spreadsheet can have only 65,000 rows. By contrast, the .XLSX file format, which was first released in 2007, allows for more than 1 million rows. Because of the limited number of rows, each spreadsheet could contain about 1,400 cases, leaving excess cases off the file altogether. Although the issue was reportedly fixed by splitting the files into smaller batches, many are slamming Public Health England. “Why are critical databases in a national pandemic posted on Excel spreadsheets?” Jonathan Ashworth, the Labour Party’s shadow health secretary, said. “Why aren’t they using specialist data-based software?”
Read the full article from Slate here. The article also gives some more examples of problems caused by using the spreadsheet software.
One of the nice things about podcasts is that usually you can usually still subscribe to them via RSS without being tracked. Advertisers however are trying to find new ways to track your listening habits and target users for ads:
Advertisers are projected to spend more than 800 million on podcasts in 2020, and companies are devising ways to provide them with data that will persuade them to spend more. The most common tactics include using IP addresses to identify users, adding tracking URLs to ads, and abandoning RSS in favor of proprietary platforms that already track their users.
Read the full article from The Markup here.
The Register reports on a controversy surrounding the automatic image-cropping functionality of Twitter:
When previewing pictures on the social media platform, Twitter automatically crops and resizes the image to match your screen size, be a smartphone display, PC monitor, etc. Twitter uses computer-vision software to decide which part of the pic to focus on, and it tends to home in on women’s chests or those with lighter skin. There are times where it will pick someone with darker skin over a lighter-skinned person, though generally, it seems to prefer women’s chests and lighter skin.
It seems Twitter has not come up with a technical fix, but is instead resorting to. Read the full article here.
Investigative journalists from ProPublica did research on a company called Arise Virtual Solutions and its abhorrent practices. This company allows large American businesses to outsource their customer service:
Arise not only creates separation between its corporate clients and individual agents, it also allows those companies to quickly add or subtract workers. In March, Instacart needed all kinds of agents. By May, those jobs had largely disappeared. “I was there for a week. We’re disposable,” one Florida agent dropped from Instacart assignments told ProPublica.
Read their article here. For these piece ProPublice partnered with NPR’s Planet Money, who produced a podcast on the same topic.