What the FCC did this year, with little fanfare, was cripple telecoms companies and wireless networks from doing what Google and Facebook do. That’s a very odd decision. If behavioural advertising is so bad consumers need an opt-out, how come you can opt out of your ISP’s profiling, but not Google’s. How could that be?
Source: Google’s become an obsessive stalker and you can’t get a restraining order • The Register
There’s nothing stopping attackers from manipulating the data they make public.
It’s one thing to have all of your dirty laundry aired in public for everyone to see. It’s another thing entirely for someone to throw in a few choice items that aren’t real.
Imagine trying to explain to the press, eager to publish the worst of the details in the documents, that everything is accurate except this particular email. Or that particular memo. That the salary document is correct except that one entry. Or that the secret customer list posted up on WikiLeaks is correct except that there’s one inaccurate addition. It would be impossible. Who would believe you? No one. And you couldn’t prove it.
Source: Hackers, Organizational Doxing, and Data Forgeries – The Atlantic
How big business jammed the wheels of innovation
The new antitrust crusaders are manning an old trench with fresh ammo. Brandeis was right, they argue, and the evidence of his rightness abounds: Citizens United has empowered business at the same time corporate profits have been hitting an all-time high; wages are stagnating at the same time stock buybacks and dividends soar; corporate mergers are spiking as entrepreneurship languishes; mom-and-pop stores are shuttering as corporate franchises fill the empty spaces.
Source: Big Business Is Killing Innovation in the U.S. – The Atlantic
Interest payments on war debt could one day exceed the direct cost of combat itself.
Source: The True Financial Cost America Will Bear for Its Debt-Fueled Post-9/11 Conflicts – The Atlantic
To help you focus, ganglion cells in the retina increase the stimulus received at the point you are looking and decreasing the stimulus from areas around the point.
Source: How to see all 12 dots in this mind-boggling optical illusion