paleeblue-blog

[paleeblue-blog]

Ordinary-looking pajamas are transformed into "smart" ones with five strategically placed sensors that measure heartbeat, respiration, and posture.

High tech ‘smart’ pajamas that monitor heartbeat, breathing and sleep posture to give you the perfect night’s rest could soon be available, scientists have revealed. Within two years the 'smart’ nightwear could monitor and help improve sleep. 

The key to the ‘smart’ pajamas is a process called reactive vapor deposition, according to the findings presented at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2019 National Meeting and Exposition. This method allows to synthesize a polymer and simultaneously deposit it directly on the fabric in the vapor phase to form various electronic components and, ultimately, integrated sensors. Unlike most electronic wearables, the vapor-deposited electronic polymer films are wash-and-wear stable, and they withstand mechanically demanding textile manufacturing routines.

The sensors are connected by wires made from thread thinly coated in silver so they are completely undetectable for the wearer. The pajama has five discrete textile patches with sensors in them. The patches are interconnected using silver-plated nylon threads shielded in cotton. Signals collected from the five patches are sent to a tiny circuit board that looks and functions like an ordinary button. Data are wirelessly sent to a receiver using a small Bluetooth transmitter that is part of the circuitry in the button. The garment includes two types of self-powered sensors that detect “ballistic movements” or pressure changes. Four of the patches are piezoelectric. They detect constant pressures like that of a bed against a person’s body. [Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied mechanical stress.] The triboelectric patch detects quick changes in pressure, such as the physical pumping of the heart which provides information on heart rate, the researcher said. [The triboelectric effect is a type of contact electrification in which certain materials become electrically charged after they are separated from a different material with which they were in contact.] For the study, the team tested the garment on volunteers and validated the readings from the sensors independently.

[paleeblue-blog]

Wanted: meaningful actors... humans need not apply.

Now about halfway through my borrowed copy of Adam Greenfield’s Everyware, I came upon an insightful observation. Mr. Greenfield’s proposes that there is at some level universal appeal for every ware/ubicomp. My instinctual reaction was one of disbelief. But as I read further I was intrigued.

He writes that humans across most cultures throughout history have instilled consciousness and sentience into the physical world and seemingly inanimate objects… “spirits” if you will. This anthropomorphism was pervasive and

“…indeed, most of the humans who ever walked the planet would have found it utter folly to conceive of the natural world as mainstream Western culture did until very recently: a passive, inert, purely material stage, on which the only meaningful actors are human ones.”

With our newfound advances in technology, we now seem to be on the cusp of giving a voice and a personality to anything that operates on electricity or batteries. The wise old oak tree used to speak to us; now its the vending machine next to the bus stop. As the ability to connect to these machines no longer relies on a keyboard, gestural or voice-recognition commands seem like the logical way to interact with another ‘living’ being.

Nowadays we pretty much expect our devices and interfaces to possess some sort of charisma—the works exhibited at MoMA’s Talk to Me exhibit are prime examples of this way of thinking. Computers, consumer electronics, phones are now quirky, funny, helpful, not-so-helpful but apologetic, courteous, kind… anything but the sterile command-line interface of yesteryear.

In the process, have people become duller, more robotic? People text one another far more than actually talking. The abbreviated acronyms-laden style of texting to me is reminiscent of Newspeak, the thought-reducing language of George Orwell’s 1984. Have we given so much of our personality and behavior to computers that we none left for ourselves?

Part of what I want to explore during thesis is how to retain our humanity, while still celebrating all of the wonderful things technology can provide us. To be continued…

[paleeblue-blog]

SPAM... not Spam! Cookies... not 🍪!

For all of us who use social networks and internet on a daily basis, we’ve had to face one common “enemy”: SPAM. Technically, spam can be considered as messages or content that we didn’t ask for or content sent by people we don’t know (did a weird experience come to your mind?). SPAM is sent to a vast group of internet users for a variety of uses such as advertising, propagation of malicious software (computer viruses or worms) or even phishing (method used to steal personal information and data), etc.

A couple of years ago it was very usual to receive spam in our inbox. We could say that email was the main tool used by this unwanted content. However, the scenario has changed throughout the years and spammers have found a new target: social networks and apps (yes! instagram, facebook, snapchat, etc). In that sense, everyone who owns an Instagram of Facebook account is aware about spamming, but in many cases we fail avoiding it. For instance, a fake Instagram or Facebook account can be easily created as the identity/verification process for new users is very easy to bypass. Many of these methods just include an email verification process which is quite weak, because it is obvious that we could use a fake gmail/outlook/hotmail account to create a fake profile in the social application. This has turned out problematic since fake accounts are a danger to cyber-security. Most of them are being used to threaten people and to steal personal data that could be used to harm users. A good security measure could be just to click the “accept as a friend” option regarding people we actually know. Never before the expression “Never trust a stranger” become more real…

On the other hand, most of us have been wondering about the same question: how can google know and be aware of my interests? How can that trip to Colombia that I searched for a couple of weeks ago started to appear in every social network that I own? Why is Facebook showing on my feed advertisements about the Colombian weather or the best restaurants in Bogotá? Well, maybe the responsible for this are the very known cookies (are you hungry? because I’m talking about computer cookies). Cookies can remember and obtain information about the users in order to show them relevant content over the time. In fact, cookies are not considered as “harmful”, but can we really control the information that is being stored about us? When we enter a website using cookies, we may be asked to accept the terms or even provide some of our personal information. Most of us do not read those terms and we just click the “I accept” option. In that regard, we are not reading what we are consenting about.

Taking all of this into account… should we make again the same question of the the last post? should we consider that technology has made us more vulnerable at some extent?

PS: just in case you have any doubt  👇

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEwtWVTRW4c

[paleeblue-blog]

First world problems: defamation and fake news.

Let’s start with a brief definition: according to the Cambridge Dictionary, defamation can be defined as the action to damage the reputation of a person or group by saying or writing false statements about a person or corporation.

By watching movies from the past century, we can notice that subjects like the reputation of a woman was one of the most common gossips. Or maybe the existence of a non-recognised child was a gossip that could easily damage a man’s reputation (just if he was poor obviously). In that sense, we can analyse that throughout time defamation and the spread of fake news has been part of our world. In the past, the main communication canal was through “ear by ear” within the people of the same city or village.

Of course, for those who were privileged, there was the option to run away from home and start a new life in another geographic area. Maybe some kilometres away, no one would be able to identify a person by the gossips that were harassing them in their hometowns.

Let’s think about a similar situation, but nowadays. We are living in a technological era in which information (true or fake) can easily reach other geographical space in just seconds. The creation of social networks and different online platforms has improved the exchange of information, making it unobstructed. In that sense, true or false information, fake news and harmful statements about a person or can be spread online as fast as lighting! Taking all of this into account… should we consider that technology has made us more vulnerable at some extent?

Well… A very known case involving defamation is Davidson v Haabeb & Ors (2011). The claimant (who worked in intelligence services in USA, investigating the supply of arms to Iraq) sued six defendants for defamation since several articles and information about her were published on internet. The claimant alleged that one of the defendants, Google Inc, was responsible as it was the provider of the site Blogger.com, which is an online platform where one of the six defendants posted information which linked her to a huge criminal conspiracy involving theft and fraud. This case seems to be very descriptive about the speed at which information (false information) can be spread and the legal treatment of defamation. Finally, the court held that Google had no responsibility under article 14 of the Directive.

What can we conclude under the light of this case? Even though some of the defendants took down some of the publications, the claimant’s reputation (according to her sue) had already suffered a huge damage, since the articles and offending information about her “activities” were able to reach a vast number of countries and people in just seconds!

So, if we consider again the “old times”, even though a person’s reputation could be harmed, maybe that could only happen within a specific territorial space. Nowadays, we can see that information has no boundaries and that trying to damage one person’s image or reputation is easy as pie…

[paleeblue-blog]

Just throwing this out there since it’s something I’ve been facing a lot lately:

No artist wants you to repost their art. Stop it.

What do I mean by reposting? I don’t mean reblogs/retweets. Those are the best thing you can do. By reposts I mean downloading another person’s content and reuploading it to another account on another site, or even sometimes the same site.

It might seem harmless, especially where fan work is concerned, but reposting is super detrimental to an artist’s growth on social media, not to mention that it’s capitalizing on another person’s hard work for personal gain. It’s essentially art theft.

Some artists do make exceptions. I’m personally fine with translations, dubs, and occasionally color addition to line art pieces because they all bring something new to the art. I’m also usually cool with re-uploads to sites that make my work accessible to fans in other countries that might not see it otherwise. All I ask for in these situations is that you talk to me first, give credit, and link-back. Sometimes that’s all artists want.

But when it comes to posting directly on mainstream sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc…. I have those. If I didn’t upload something there, I probably didn’t want to, or I forgot, or I’m still getting around to it. That’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card to repost it. “I want to share this on Instagram but there’s no reblog feature” isn’t a free pass to repost, either.

Artists put a lot of time and effort into the things they make. Reposting takes away the interactions and followers they could have received if that reposter had just shared a link instead. But if you still think you have a good reason to re-upload something, just ask. Always, always ask. Silence should be taken as a “no,” and if they do give permission, always link back. Always credit. There’s something uniquely disheartening about seeing a creation you worked so hard to perfect blowing up on someone else’s account while you see little to nothing in return.

**TLDR**

Always share the original. 

Get permission if you can’t.

That’s all we really want.

[paleeblue-blog]

It could happen here: How China's social credit system demonstrates the future of social control in smart cities everywhere

Adam Greenfield (previously) is one of the best thinkers when it comes to the social consequences of ubiquitous computing and smart cities; he’s the latest contributor Ian Bogost’s special series on “smart cities” for The Atlantic (previously: Bruce Sterling, Molly Sauter).

Greenfield writes about China’s “Citizen Scores”, a rapidly growing system of social control that marries your credit report, internet usage, location data, snitching by your peers, and other factors (like your perceived “sincerity”) to determine whether you can borrow money, use high-speed transport, get a job, or rent an apartment.

This system – still in its early days, but aggressively pushed by the Chinese authorities and relentlessly executed by China’s tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba – is already changing the nature of urban life in China. The system is opaque and it’s impossible for someone to know whether they’ve been denied something as a form of punishment, or what triggered that punishment, inspiring a kind of high-tech paranoiac Kafkaism.

There’s nothing about Citizen Scores that makes it inherently Chinese. Western cities have implemented secret, wide-ranging mass surveillance, from CCTV to license-plate cameras to Stingray cell-site simulators. What’s more, western nations have happily adopted China’s internet surveillance and control tactics, from blocking order to mass internet surveillance to the creation of astroturf armies to push the state agenda.

And China got the idea of Citizen Scores from western credit bureaus, like Equifax, which operates with such impunity that even leaking the sensitive data of virtually every adult American has no real consequences.

The Chinese-Western feedback loop involves each worsening the other’s worst ideas, lather-rinse-repeating in the most dystopian of fashion. China’s social control is just neoliberal capitalism’s social control, plus ten years.

https://boingboing.net/2018/02/22/sincerity-construction.html

[paleeblue-blog]

The internet could change next week, and not in a good way

You may have heard about the efforts in Europe to reform copyright law. The debate has been ongoing in the European Parliament for months. If approved next week, these new regulations would require us to automatically filter and block content that you upload without meaningful consideration of your right to free expression. 

We respect the copyrights and trademarks of others, and we take all reports seriously to ensure that your creative expression is protected. We make this clear in our Community Guidelines. There’s already a legal framework that works and is fair: Today we take down posts and media that contain allegedly infringing content when we receive a valid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown request. We also provide clear-cut ways for people to fight back if they believe their removed content was not a true violation. These instances are monitored and reported and live in our biannual transparency report. 

The suggestion to use automated filters for issues of copyright is short-sighted at best and harmful at worst. Automated filters are unable to determine whether a use should be considered “fair use” under the law and are unable to determine whether a use is authorized by a license agreement. They are unable to distinguish legitimate parody, satire, or even your own personal pictures that could be matched with similar photographs that have been protected by someone else. We don’t believe that technology should replace human judgment. Tumblr is and always has been a place for creative expression, and these new regulations would only make it harder for you to express yourself with the freedom and clarity you do so now. 

If you access Tumblr from Europe and want to act, you can find more information on saveyourinternet.eu. 

[paleeblue-blog]

Is there real protection of copyright beyond the EU?

 Without concerning if it is a common or civil law tradition country, almost every nation has a regulation about intellectual property. It is curious that in some countries, like Chile, despite having regulation and legislation regarding this subject (Law N° 17.336, published on 28 October 1970), there are no important consequences when breaching the rights of an author or an artist. An easy way of proving this is as simply as taking a walk around Santiago’s downtown. Sadly, we may find a lot of people selling piracy, especially books. One possible question to formulate could be: Does this happen because of the high prices of books in Chile? Or Is this happening because of the weakness of Chilean intellectual property law?

One thing we must be sure about is that in Chile no one will go to jail if they sell piracy. The law doesn’t work that way. In fact, Santiago’s downtown concentrates an important number of police stations and even the government house is placed there! The “funny” thing is that the Chilean authorities are in touch with these practices everyday. People are selling and distributing unauthorized copies of books just in front of police officers and it seems to be a very profitable business, since the nationals contribute with this practice by buying those books!  As we may know, such situations will not be seen in the territory of the UK...

In fact, other countries in Latin America like Perú (Tacna City), are visited by people to get the chance to buy piracy and books which are commonly sold in markets around the city.

On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act establishes a series of remedies which can be actionable by the copyright owner. In that sense, the law allows the copyright owner to act as a plaintiff and sue the offender. Besides, the Act establishes criminal liability to those that without the licence of the copyright owner develop one of the activities there described. One of those is precisely the sale of piracy. The curious thing is that the Chilean legislation has established similar remedies. In fact, the Chilean law doesn’t lack of remedies and protection of copyright. So, even if both legislative systems are worried about these issues and both contemplate sanctions for infringements to copyright, why do the UK and the EU citizens behave differently? Should the laws in Latin American countries strengthen their scope? Or is it a cultural problem?

Many questions can be formulated. But one thing for sure is that in UK and EU  people do understand the importance and value of a creative expression or artistic work.

Therefore, it could be a matter of culture…

#amatterofculture 

#Piracy

#Copyright

#Chilecandoitbetter