Browser Fingerprinting: What Is It and What Should You Do About It?
Have you ever heard of browser fingerprinting? It’s okay if you haven’t, since almost nobody else has ever heard of it, either. Browser fingerprinting is an incredibly accurate method of identifying unique browsers and tracking online activity. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to wipe all of your fingerprints from the internet. But first, let’s start by exploring what, exactly, browser fingerprinting is.
Digital Detox 2.3: Biased, who me? – Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ)
With the pervasive and growing prominence of social media in our social discourse, it appears that while we may not have our own facts, we tend to create a web of resources that are selective in the facts presented, or that reinforce if not echo our own interpretation of facts. For example, researcher Ana Lucía Schmidt and her colleagues found that “Content consumption on Facebook is strongly affected by the tendency of users to limit their exposure to a few sites.” The result is that we become less open to different interpretations of facts and less capable of analyzing the merits of others’ opinions. We use the validations of others with the same viewpoint to confirm our views and values. Not only do we tend towards sources that reinforce our positions, the very nature of social media exacerbates differences, encourages intolerance and moves our self-created comfort zones further from the political center. As Zeynep Tufecki notes in her book, Twitter and Tear Gas, “Facebook’s own studies show that the algorithm contributes to this bias by making the feed somewhat more tilted toward one’s existing views, reinforcing the echo chamber.”
Below are several mathematical typefaces which are inspired by mathematical theorems or open problems. Most include a puzzle font: reading them is itself a mathematical puzzle.
In these fonts, each letter or digit or ampersand can be dissected (cut into pieces such that those pieces re-arrange) into a 6 × 6 square. The dissections all happen to be polyomino dissections, and they allow translation, rotation, and reflection in the piece re-arrangement. There are three different fonts, each using up to 2, 3, or 4 pieces in each dissection. Of course, with more pieces, it is easier to get nicer-looking letters. The 4-piece font uses some disconnected pieces (but still each piece moves as a single unit), while the 2- and 3-piece fonts use connected pieces. The 4-piece font is the only one where we achieve uniform letter heights. Origin. The 3- and 4-piece font come from a draft of The Art of Computer Programming, volume 4, pre-fascicle 9B “A Potpourri of Puzzles”, where Knuth poses (and solves) two exercises in mathematical/puzzle font design. See Knuth's December 2018 profile in the New York Times. These fonts were originally presented at Knuth's 80th Birthday Party in January 2018.
The Weird Machine That Measured Radio Audiences in the '30s and '40s
The February 1945 issue of Radio-Craft magazine included an article titled “Radio Audience Meter” which looked at the machine that was revolutionizing audience measurement. First installed in homes on a trial basis in 1939, the Audimeter was placed next to a family’s existing radio. The article included photo cutaways that showed how the Audimeter worked. Back in those days, radios had dials. Fitted with a series of gears, the Audimeter was a standalone device connected to a radio. It had an arm that moved whenever the radio dial was turned. So whenever the radio station was changed, the Audimeter’s arm would swivel along a long tape that was slowly rolling inside this gadget. The tape inside was about 100 feet long and three inches wide and reportedly lasted for about a month of recording.
In all aspects of life, personal information is collected and analyzed by organizations that produce various outcomes—surveillance is not simply good or bad, helpful or harmful, but it is never neutral. These three short films were created to raise awareness about how large organizations use data and how these practices affect life chances and choices. We need to consider these implications, and critically examine the logics and practices within big data systems that underpin, enable, and accelerate surveillance. These three short films speculating surveillance futures and the effects of deeply embedded and connected surveillant systems on our everyday lives were produced as part of a international multiphase project on Big Data Surveillance, by the Surveillance Studies Centre. Intended as public education tools to spark discussion and extend understandings of surveillance, trust, and privacy in the digital age, each film focuses on a different aspect of big data surveillance and the tensions that manifest when the human is interpreted by the machine. Each film raises issues in our understandings of trust and surveilled relations: Blaxites highlights issues that arise when different data systems are connected. A Model Employee examines data ownership and the need to earn a system’s trust. Frames exposes the problems in trusting sensor data and facial recognition to interpret human behaviour.
How do memes circulate? Why do memes circulate? What does it mean to express your feelings, attitudes, and even politics through memes? This three day mini course introduces you to the history of GIFs and memes, surveys the use and abuse of memes, and asks you to make your own memes. By the end of the course, you’ll have a better understanding of meme culture and be able to engage more deeply with this new folk art form.
The main goal of the Web Design Museum project is to map out past trends in web design that were dominant on the Internet between 1991 and 2006. We would like to preserve the creative legacy of web designers from the turn of the millennium for future generations, since Internet users in 2030 would hardly guess how unique the websites in 2003 were in terms of their design.
A handful of experts in the emerging field of robot morality are trying to change that. Computer scientists are teaming up with philosophers, psychologists, linguists, lawyers, theologians and human rights experts to identify the set of decision points that robots would need to work through in order to emulate our own thinking about right and wrong. Scheutz defines “morality” broadly, as a factor that can come into play when choosing between contradictory paths.
Generating a Bunch Of "Internet Noise" Isn't Going to Hide Your Browsing Habits
The theory here seems great, you head to a web site like Internet Noise or install an extension like Noiszy, and those sites perform random searches on Google, hoping to camouflage everything you’re actually searching for. The problem is that it doesn’t really work for privacy purposes, a fact that Dan Schultz, the developer behind Internet Noise, even mentions on his web site when he says, “this button will make some noise as a form of digital protest. It does not make you safe.” Schultz’s project is meant to raise awareness as a sign of protest. It’s art, not a privacy tool. Internet Noise doesn’t linger on sites long enough to leave that much of an impression, and even if it did spend more time there, filtering out the random noise would be a trivial task. Advertisers are looking for consistent visits to specific sites, not the places you randomly end up for a few seconds after searching for something on Google. If our ad profiles were filled with all the accidental clicks on Yahoo Answers links, they’d be pointless.
Who is going to help build a pro-social web? – Dave’s Educational Blog
You need to help build a pro-social web. Every time you are fair to someone you disagree with on the internet, you leave a good connection behind you. You create a participatory node that represents your values. Every time you fact check something before you post it, you’re creating a reliable lesson that can be learned by someone else. Every time you participate, in a conscious, deliberate way, you are putting another stone into the foundation that supports the values you believe in. The last three years have shown us the tremendous impact that a cynical, extremist and data-driven web can have on our culture. Look at what it’s done to our poor friends in the UK (good luck over there). So many of these damaging, divisive culture wars are the creation of companies (and governments) with an agenda that has nothing to do with the well-being of our society. Please participate. Do it well. Put your values on the internet. Our society is literally being shaped by the internet right now, and will be for the foreseeable future. We are all watching the web we’re building. The web is us. Help build a good one. Please help build a pro-social web.
Digital Well-Being Is Common Sense | Common Sense Media
The ubiquity of smartphones and other internet-connected devices makes it possible for kids to interact with the digital world from a very young age. Ninety-eight percent of kids under 8 have access to a device at home, and 50 percent of teenagers say they feel addicted to their phones. Families have seemingly endless media and entertainment choices, but high-quality, age-appropriate content is still hard to find. Educators face new challenges with powerful learning tools (and powerful distractions) in the classroom. And technology companies collect all kinds of information from us (and from our kids), sometimes without clarifying how it will be used. Every day, the world of media and tech gets more complex. But there's good news: Together with parents like you, and alongside educators, policymakers, and industry partners, we're building a movement to improve digital well-being for kids, schools, and communities everywhere.
BBC - Future - Why there’s so little left of the early internet
It took nearly five years into the internet’s life before anyone made a concerted effort to archive it. Much of our earliest online activity has disappeared.
Create high-quality GIFs without watermark from YouTube videos. Search YouTube videos using full search below or paste the link to the video to get started.
Hypnospace, Wrong Box: New video games bring back the ’90s and 2000s web.
The cycle of adoption and abandonment, and the ways in which our virtual lives have been formed by this engagement in the past several decades, is integral to two new games that seek to memorialize shuttered virtual spaces. With Wrong Box, released in February, and Hypnospace Outlaw, published in early March to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, players are transported into manifestations of the digital past, referencing web platforms popular during late ’90s and early 2000s. By revisiting vanished versions of our digital worlds, both games serve not just as simple gateways to a nostalgic past but as a reminder of the virtual lives we’ve continuously left behind ever since.
Why you should always use YouTube's Privacy-Enhanced Mode - gHacks Tech News
YouTube launched a new feature on the site recently that it called Privacy-Enhanced Mode. You find the option when you open the embed options on the site to embed video code on third-party websites. YouTube videos can be embedded on third-party sites like mine directly so that visitors to my site can play the videos without having to click through to YouTube first. Privacy-Enhanced Mode is a new option that YouTube added to the embed preferences that improves privacy when embedding videos on third-party sites. When enabled, YouTube won't store information about visitors to pages on your site that have YouTube videos embedded on them unless visitors interact with those videos. Think of it as click-to-play; unless you click, YouTube promises that it won't store information about you.
There’s a war going on. When isn’t there a war going on? But I’m not talking about a physical war here: I’m talking about a war over meaning. This particular war is a fight over what “open source” means.
The Surveillance Studies Centre | A multi-disciplinary & international research centre at Queen's University
Surveillance of many kinds is growing rapidly throughout the world and the Surveillance Studies Centre (SSC) at Queen’s University is committed to high quality research to follow such developments. Current active research explores camera surveillance, ID systems, biometrics, social media, border and airport controls – indeed on many aspects of contemporary monitoring, tracking, management and control
Music is a language we are all trained in from birth. As we develop, the songs we hear and sing help shape our impressions of the world around us. Music enhances experiences, and provides emotional connections and novel understanding. Science needs music. Any scientist will tell you there is a rich and deep beauty to exploring the natural world. However, when scientists communicate their findings, the energy of the experience is often lost due to the objectivity that science demands while interpreting and sharing conclusions. The Music of Science is an effort to fuel science literacy and interest by sharing the incredible stories of science through a musical setting. Though currently in its infancy, it will explore the adventures of today’s scientists, as well as their discoveries and the majesty of nature.
School Stumbles Upon Chalkboards From 1917 During Renovation, Perfectly Preserved Lessons Provide Rare Look Into Past. | The Literacy Site Blog
Classrooms at Emerson High School in Oklahoma City were getting a routine facelift when renovators accidentally uncovered an incredible glimpse into the history of American education. Construction workers were removing chalkboards– taking them down to replace them with new Smart Boards– when they stumbled upon some older chalkboards underneath. Luckily, they stopped to examine the chalkboards before destroying them, and they quickly realized that the boards were from 1917… Nearly 100 years ago! Stuck underneath layers of other boards, these antique chalkboards had been preserved with the chalk still on them, providing an amazing view of life in a mid-20th-century classroom.
Our innovative new content format makes mathematics more interactive than ever before. At every step students have to actively participate, explore, and discover new ideas. Unlike videos and other textbooks, students don’t just consume information: they engage through problem solving, reasoning and creativity.
The Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings. Why? - The New York Times
Last fall, tenants at the Atlantic Plaza Towers, a rent-stabilized apartment complex in Brooklyn, received an alarming letter in the mail. Their landlord was planning to do away with the key-fob system that allowed them entry into their buildings on the theory that lost fobs could wind up in the wrong hands and were now also relatively easy to duplicate. Instead, property managers planned to install facial recognition technology as a means of access. It would feature “an encrypted reference file” that is “only usable in conjunction with the proprietary algorithm software of the system,” the letter explained, in a predictably failed effort to mitigate concerns about privacy. As it happened, not every tenant was aware of these particular Orwellian developments. New mailboxes in the buildings required new keys, and to obtain a new key you had to submit to being photographed; some residents had refused to do this and so were not getting their mail. In order to let neighbors who might not have seen the letter know what was potentially coming, five tenants convened in the lobby of one of the two buildings on a late October morning to spread the word. A few days later, those five tenants — like most of the residents at Atlantic, black women — received a notice from property management with pictures of the gathering taken from a security camera; they were told that the lobby was not “a place to solicit, electioneer, hang out or loiter.”
We’re all guilty of eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. And let’s face it—some of them can be pretty entertaining. Dreamworks animation artist Avner Geller illustrates the weird and wonderful things he overhears in cafes, public transportation, and on the streets of Los Angeles. His personal ongoing series of funny illustrations, titled #ThingsThatiHear, reveals just how strange modern life can be.
