Saturday, April 13, 2019

What An Aging Population Means For The Future Of The Internet

     Winning the War on Poverty New York Times. Resilc: “We live in a country run by the rich, for the rich since 1492.”


NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Dismantle a Nuclear Missile.


RICHARD FERNANDEZ: You never hear the one that gets you.

Our expectations of the future are set by the past. When Stephen Hawking died in 2018 his final warning to humanity was to beware artificial intelligence, climate change and a meteor strike from outer space. Although these are now familiar terms no newspaper editor before 1970 would have heard of them. Until the early 1980s global warming fears did not exist: it was global cooling the press warned about. The now familiar dinosaur killing Chicxulub impact crater was only found in 1978 by “geophysicists Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo … as part of an airborne magnetic survey of the Gulf of Mexico north of the Yucatán peninsula”. Fears of runaway AI only became mainstream in the 21st century. None of these fears are more than 40 years old.
If Stephen Hawking time traveled to whisper his final warning to Albert Einstein the 20th century genius would probably not have had a clue what the 21st century physicist was talking about. . . .
Maybe governments shouldn’t embark on 50 year plans given the revelatory power of new information. While people can’t help but express the future in terms of the past it is more than likely that politicians who embark on huge programs based on multi decade predictions will be sorely disappointed. It’s entirely probable we’ve never even heard of whatever will worry the world of 2080. Tomorrow, like the Russian sky, is full of surprises.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A BIG DEAL What An Aging Population Means For The Future Of The Internet BuzzFeed
“There will soon be more people aged 65+ in the US than in any other demographic, and it will stay that way for decades. I’ve spent months collecting data on the online habits of older people, with a particular focus on how they interact with false content. I just published a new story that dives deep into this — here are some of the most compelling points: 
  • Four recent studies found that those over 65 are more likely to consume and share fake news on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and the web.
  • They don’t have a good understanding of the role algorithms play in determining what content we see online.
  • They have a harder time differentiatingbetween news and opinion.
  • They are often targeted with ads from hyperpartisan and fake news sites.
  • They’re also targeted by online scams, malware, and other internet ills. Just last month, the Department of Justice announced “the largest coordinated sweep of elder fraud cases in history

    At Deutsche Welle Sabine Peschel wonders How do independent publishers in Germany survive ? -- especially after the recent bankruptcy of Germany's largest book wholesaler, KNV. 
       She notes that: 
Around 7 percent of publishers account for 95 percent of the total turnover of more than €5 billion ($5.62 billion). The remaining 93 percent are small and medium-sized independent publishers. These are often companies that are run with a lot of commitment and little money by one, two or a small group of people and that publish less than 10 books a year.


              'Authors and translators on their unique relationship'  In The Guardian Claire Armitstead looks, at some length, at 'It's a silent conversation': authors and translators on their unique relationship, with a number of examples -- an interesting overview. 


Web Security Using User Authentication Methodologies: CAPTCHA, OTP and User Behaviour Authentication
Prestige Institute of Management, 4 April 2019. The paper examines the dependency of citizens on on-line transactions highlighting the issues of data thefts & identity theft. The paper also discusses the methodologies for CAPTCHA, OTP and UBA for user authentication and examines the efficacy of web security through these methods.
Posted by at