The following video from Deutsche Welle recalls why the supply of semiconductors have become geopolitical.
So as the coronavirus crisis reshapes supply and demand, chip companies are scrambling. And if there’s an industry that can’t simply ramp up production in a hurry, or ask clients to do without their product for a while, or shift around parts of their manufacturing rapidly, it’s the chip industry.
Apparently rare user names on big social media platform have become so valuable that there is even a marketplace for such names that have been obtained by hackers. As an article at The Verge details:
These usernames tend to be single words — in rare cases, individual letters or numbers — and they can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on underground markets for stolen digital goods. And because platforms like Instagram and Twitter have rules barring the buying and selling of accounts, the hackers interested in procuring one of these coveted handles often resort to illegal means to obtain them.
Philosopher Peter Singer writes in a Project Syndicate about a medical doctor Texas that facing criminal persecution because he “refused to let a vial of vaccine expire and sought out eligible recipients before the doses would have to be discarded.” In the article Singer makes some interesting reflections on ethical and rule based systems.
Some more interesting articles and quotes critical of the newly popular non-fungible tokens (NFT):
In a blog post on medium user everest pipkin claims that the “current ecological cost of cryptoart and cryptocurrency is very real and very large, and while steps can be taken to reign in some of that energy cost, the crypto- market is still based in a value system that fundamentally ties worth to spent physical resources.”
Author Seth Godin furthermore warns that NFTS are “a dangerous trap”:
The more time and passion that creators devote to chasing the NFT, the more time they’ll spend trying to create the appearance of scarcity and hustling people to believe that the tokens will go up in value. They’ll become promoters of digital tokens more than they are creators. Because that’s the only reason that someone is likely to buy one–like a stock, they hope it will go up in value. Unlike some stocks, it doesn’t pay dividends or come with any other rights. And unlike actual works of art, NFTs aren’t usually aesthetically beautiful on their own, they simply represent something that is.
Vox published an article about the recent deal between the financial services company Square and the steaming music service Tidal. They note that a possible outcome of the deal may involve using so-called NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to sell digital collectibles of musicians:
More intriguingly, given Dorsey’s love of All Things Blockchain, and the current mania over NFTs, it won’t be surprising to see Square + Tidal work on their own NFT scheme. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are blockchain-enabled digital pieces of … anything that investors and speculators and collectors are hoovering up at a crazy rate. Even if none of this makes sense to you, you may have heard about people paying real money — a lot of money — for digital ephemera like cartoon cat GIFs or animated trading cards of NBA players dunking or blocking. It’s a thing, for now.
Read the full article here.
Someone recently posted a funny picture on the memes Reddit forum about their struggles with Google’s CAPTCHA test that checks if the user is a bit. There are also some funny comments, check it out here.
In an article by Yuval Noah Harari at the Financial Times, he talks about how Israel has “vaccines for data” deal with the company Pfizer:
Meanwhile, Israel has the seventh highest average confirmed case rate, and to counter the disaster it resorted to a “vaccines for data” deal with the American corporation Pfizer. Pfizer agreed to provide Israel with enough vaccines for the entire population, in exchange for huge amounts of valuable data, raising concerns about privacy and data monopoly, and demonstrating that citizens’ data is now one of the most valuable state assets.
Read more about it also in an article titled “Vaccines For Data: Israel’s Pfizer Deal Drives Quick Rollout — And Privacy Worries” at NPR.org.
Harry Halpin (a researcher and CEO of privacy startup Nym Technologies) wrote a critical article about the standards used by prominent so-called immunity passports. Besides a technical critique of the standards, he also makes some important remarks about the risks related to the obduracy of the technologies:
The question should not be whether or not immunity passports can be technically secure and private, but whether or not they should be built at all. Due to the state of emergency caused by COVID-19, fundamental rights – such as the freedom of movement – could be taken away based on data connected to persistent digital identity. Yet temporary measures meant for a purpose as seemingly harmless as reviving tourism could become normalized as the blockchain-based identity databases are by design permanent and are difficult to disassemble once the crisis has past. Blockchain technology could just as easily allow automated discrimination based on personal data as it could enable travel during COVID-19, and form the technical basis for a ‘social credit’ system that crosses borders.
The full, non peer-reviewed article can be found at arXiv.
Rich Mogull writes at TidBITS (a blog focusing on Apple products and technologies) about Apple’s latest Platform Security user guide. He notes how the emphasis for increasing security is on vertical integration, which he defines as “the combination of hardware, software, and cloud-based services to build a comprehensive ecosystem.” This of course has other effects which he notes:
But with great power comes great lock-in. Relying on a particular vendor’s cloud service means that if the service goes down or the vendor decides to discontinue the service, you are the proud owner of a useless hunk of plastic and electronic components. While Apple isn’t going out of business anytime soon, we saw issues earlier this year when the company’s certificate server was overwhelmed and responded slowly to integrity checks, preventing some users from being able to launch apps.
Read the full article here.
Amusing conversations on this picture in the subreddit ProgrammerHumor after someone posted a picture of Bart from The Simpsons writing “Excel is not a database” on a chalkboard as punishment.