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DL 286

What Monsters Might Be Lurking There?

Published: April 10, 2021 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 286. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Welcome back all! I hope you and those around you are well.

This week I worked on a lot of things behind the scenes. More to come soon.

I did receive my second COVID vaccine this week. Thank you to the health care workers who have been on the front lines.

📺 Watch

Alan Wilson Watts (1915–1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker best known for interpreting Eastern philosophy for Western audiences.

Whenever the world gets out of balance, we can revisit his wise words to make sense of things.

Most diabolical things that are done, were done in the name of righteousness.

A reminder that certainty about one's own goodness can be the most dangerous certainty of all.

📚 Read

The personal details of more than 500 million Facebook users—including full names and phone numbers—were posted to an online forum this week. Private data not listed in public profiles was also shared, including unique Facebook user IDs, location, job details, and gender information.

The hacked database was discovered by Alon Gal of Hudson Rock Security, who noted an anonymous hacker created a Telegram bot to search the database for specific phone numbers—for a fee.

HaveIBeenPwned, maintained by security researcher Troy Hunt, lets you legally search billions of records for your email or phone number. There are also strategies to protect yourself from future breaches.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has published a General Comment on children's rights in relation to the digital environment.

Anne Collier indicates we now have no excuse for not teaching children their digital rights. This addendum to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first binding international document to spell out human rights concerning all things digital.

Issues related to suicide and self-harm touch nearly every digital platform. The internet is increasingly where people search, discuss, and seek support for mental health issues.

According to Stanford Internet Observatory research, many platforms have no policies related to self-harm or suicide at all.

In "Self-Harm Policies and Internet Platforms," authors surveyed 39 platforms—search engines, social networks, TikTok-style platforms, gaming platforms, dating apps, and messaging apps. Some have robust policies; many have ignored these issues altogether.

Proctorio Is Using Racist Algorithms to Detect Faces

Proctorio, exam surveillance software designed to keep students from cheating, relies on open-source software with a history of racial bias issues.

Student researcher Akash Satheesan reverse-engineered the controversial exam software and published findings showing Proctorio's facial detection function uses code identical to OpenCV—an open-source computer vision library infamous for failing to recognize non-white faces.

When your surveillance tool doesn't see everyone equally, it's not just flawed technology—it's discrimination by design.

Researchers at Fermilab announced a result 20 years in the making that could upend physicists' understanding of how the universe works.

Experiments with particles known as muons suggest there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos not yet known to science.

The anomaly is small—just 2.5 parts in 1 billion—but may require an explanation in the form of entirely new elementary particles. If confirmed, it would challenge the Standard Model of particle physics, the rulebook for how the universe works.

🔨 Do

I'm stepping up my game with home automation and developing a "smart home."

I've been researching options and purchased the Hubitat Elevation this week. More info coming on the process and experience. The key: local control, not dependent on cloud services.

🤔 Consider

Good and evil don't really exist. Do you, dog?

Earl Simmons (DMX)

DMX's questioning of moral binaries connects to Alan Watts's observation about righteousness—the diabolical done in the name of good. The monsters lurking might not be the ones we expect.

Bonus: A debate is raging over social media's role in dividing us. Perhaps we should instead focus on systemic, deeply-rooted inequities.

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