Last week, we discussed the Stingray surveillance tool that may be used to collect information on the people at protests. The resistance has its tech…
Author: Don Yarman
OPLIN 4Cast #700: Balancing Privacy and Public Health
Posted in 4cast, and Healthcare
Last month, we covered plans by Apple and Google to build contact-tracing capabilities into phones. These new exposure-notification tools were released last Wednesday, allowing for…
Artificial intelligence applications are getting very good at learning from images, so Intel and Microsoft are exploring a way to convert binary computer code into grayscale pictures. Their A.I. can then scan the images for patterns, and in this way, identify malware with increased accuracy.
OPLIN 4Cast #696: Beating Up on Zoom
Posted in 4cast
Like most of you, I’m on one video-conferencing platform or another several times a day, and more often than not, it’s Zoom. I kind of…
The CDC director says very aggressive contact tracing will be required to scale back the current measures to contain the spread of COVID-19. Even as…
In response to the pandemic’s shuttering of schools and libraries, the Open Library has become more open, turning the collection into the National Emergency Library. It’s a great boon for readers and learners, but is it legal?
OPLIN 4Cast #691: Unprecedented spike in residential internet demand
Posted in 4cast, Braoadband, Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube
Over the course of two weeks, Ohio library internet traffic dropped from daily peaks over 8 Gigabits per second down to brief spikes that barely…
The 4Cast should be about trends and currents in technology that are relevant to public library services. COVID-19, the current coronavirus strain dominating the headlines and our social media feeds, is not a technology story, but it’s practically all the tech journalists are talking about.
In libraries, we take pains to clear patron session data off of our computers. But are the auto dealerships and rental agencies as cautious? Turns out there’s no way to be sure that previous drivers of your rental car (or owners of your new used car) have deleted the apps and accounts that gave them access to the car’s data. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of problems that come when your car is part of the Internet of Things.
January 28 was Data Privacy Day, and Facebook took the occasion to announce that it was putting its “Clear History” function, now rechristened Off-Facebook Activity Tool, into general release. Not a cure-all, but certainly a step in the right direction. Good thing we only have to think about data privacy on one day a year, right?