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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Climate crisis and new instances of viruses

samedi 30 avril 2022 à 05:06

Global heating effects will lead to thousands of instances of viruses jumping to a new host species, due to various host species' moving to new habitats.

The prediction suggests around 15,000 such events, but I doubt that we can predict anything more accurate than "many thousands".

how Texas voter suppression helps keep climate action off the table.

samedi 30 avril 2022 à 05:06

*"We have a democracy problem": how Texas voter suppression helps keep climate action off the table.*

An internal document from Facebook says that the company has no systematic control of how data gets used

samedi 30 avril 2022 à 05:06

An internal document from Facebook says that the company has no systematic control over what purposes each kind of data gets used for. "We can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as 'we will not use X data for Y purpose.' And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do."

This is because much of Facebook's important data is derived correlations and instances of those correlations. Those didn't directly come from anywhere, but rather was calculated based on various kinds of data from various sources, including various people's personal data.

If they find that listening to a certain song has a 75% correlation with being gay, the fact that person X listened to that song is certainly personal data. What about the conclusion that X is likely to be gay? What do various privacy laws require about data like that?

If Europe is firm about regulating the whole mass of data that companies like Facebook deduce, it might make surveillance-based advertising totally unfeasible. That would be great. But Big Data will lobby for a weaker rule, or a weaker interpretation, that would make less difference.

Ukraine names 10 Russian soldiers in alleged human rights abuses

samedi 30 avril 2022 à 04:51

*Ukraine names 10 Russian soldiers in alleged human rights abuses in Bucha.*

Wendy's refuses to support action against enslavement of farm workers.

samedi 30 avril 2022 à 04:51

Wendy's refuses to support action against enslavement of farm workers.