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WELCOME TO THE Weird Wide Web – where we take a look at the week’s best offerings in tech and social media news.
Twitter is now making it easier for people to report abuse and block people. Watch out trolls…
Are your neighbours inconsiderate and loud? Does the person sleeping next to you snore like a bear during hibernation? These smart earplugs could be the answer to ALL (probably not all) of your problems.
If you’re totally obsessed with tech gadgets, these Christmas decorations will light up your life (sorry). They are the first ever wirelessly powered Christmas lights controlled by your smartphone. One problem: The creators are looking for funding on Kickstarter so they won’t deliver your decorations until October NEXT year.
Three years after his death, Steve Jobs held a federal courtroom transfixed on Friday, as attorneys played a video of his testimony in a class-action lawsuit against Apple.
Jobs was pale and hoarse during the deposition given a few months before his death in 2011, but defended Apple against allegations they were inflating iPod prices by locking music lovers into using its players.
A British vlogger has sold more than 78,000 copies of her first book in a week, beating established authors like JK Rowling and Dan Brown.
“Girl Online” by 24-year-old Zoe Sugg set a record for sales of a debut novel in the UK. Sugg, better known as Zoella has more than 6.6 million followers on Youtube.
- Additional reporting by Rónán Duffy
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I think you should put IAB into the equation. I don’t recall reading on the Journal about last week’s news of the Belgian data protection supervisory authority (equivalent of the DPC) and their decision. It should be a wake up call. There is significant lobbying giving wrong advice such as allowing ‘legitimate interest’ on cookies. Cookie banner vendors not able to sell compliant products. Also, there is a large amount of personal data collected by google and sent outside the EU on most websites, used for google surveillance for ‘advertising’. A lot of enforcement could be sorted quickly.
AI is where tight regulations need to be implemented. I fear that AI will get so powerful, we will go past the point of rescue if it is not regulated soon.
@James Beattie: skynet
@James Beattie: if the GDPR was enforced, a lot would be covered. At present, before AI kicks in, there is massive amount of data unlawfully collected that no one has the guts to say to FB it should be deleted. Then there is profiling and transparency. Enforcement of these would help significantly.
The push is towards online regulation and silencing anyone that does not stick to the prevailing definition of “Good Information”, some people calling for it genuinely believe it will be a positive outcome, those people lack imagination.
The idea of defining if current technological development is good or bad is pointless, its how its used that defines that in practice, currently how profit driven corporations decide to use the data is the concern, but an AI is likely to make decisions based on criteria than we can’t even imagine, much less control.
Corporations hoping to harness its power to profit, universally lack the humility to realise they can’t control, coerce or contain a true AI, that could become sentient and decide the fate of humanity in a nanosecond.
@David Van-Standen: agree Dave
“The company and its flagship social network have been central to the building of the modern internet” – You are joking, right? Unless to you modern internet is synonymous with social media.
I haven’t used Facebook in nearly a decade, and proud of it!
have your say