Lifeboat Foundation

By Chris Baraniuk — BBC Future

The internet is one big experiment, and you’re part of it. Every day, millions of trials are manipulating what you see when you browse online, to find out how to keep your attention, make you click more links – and spend more money. And these experiments are often secret. You’ll probably never know you were part of them.

This is all thanks to something now well-known in the tech industry, called A/B testing. It means that the web pages served to you are not necessarily the same as those shown to the next person – they might have slightly different colours, an alternate headline or, on social networks, you could be shown different personal information about your friends and family.

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FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)

FINANCIAL TIMES: Insurers ‘unready’ for climate change http://on.ft.com/1CWVHWM

HUFF POST: Amelia: IPsoft’s New Artificial Intelligence Can Think Like A Human, And Wants Your Job http://lnkd.in/daZCHqx

CIO: Lufthansa leaves the computing to IBM http://trib.al/JPKogpE

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)” »

Nafeez Ahmed — The Guardian

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

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FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)

INFOWORLD: General Electric lays out big plans for big data http://www.infoworld.com/article/2616433/big-data/general-el…-data.html

THE TELEGRAPH: The Real Cyborgs http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/the-future-is-android/index.html

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Who Has a Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap? Guess! http://www.21stcentech.com/climate-change-adaptation-roadmap-guess/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)” »

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 21, 2014)

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine? http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-ma…n-machine/

FINANCIAL TIMES: IBM shares tumble as profits and sales fall at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/500feb78-584e-11e4-b331-00144feab7de.html

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Ohio State University Invents All-in-One Solar Cell and Battery http://www.21stcentech.com/ohio-state-university-invents-all…l-battery/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 21, 2014)” »

By Tom Risen — US News

The FBI is preparing to launch a facial recognition database this summer that includes photos of people without criminal records- and a court case in New York may expand the ability of the government to request data from Facebook to help.

The bureau’s database, called the Next Generation Identification system, or NGI, builds upon the government’s fingerprint database and is slated to be operational this summer, according to the FBI. This database will contain photos of anybody who sends images as part of an application for a job that requires fingerprinting or a background check – even if that person has no criminal record – according to research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy advocacy organization. The FBI is slated to have 52 million face images by 2015, according to the EFF.

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FUTURISM UPDATE (October 20, 2014)

MASHABLE: Syrian Woman Wears Hidden Camera to Reveal Life Under ISIS Rule http://mashable.com/2014/09/24/syria-hidden-camera/

TECH CRUNCH: 10 Trends Transforming Enterprise IT http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/18/big-changes-big-money-10-tr…rprise-it/

WIRED: American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing?mbid=synd_digg

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 20, 2014)” »

By Arik Hesseldahl — Re/Code

Hackers operating somewhere in Eastern Europe have penetrated the networks of energy companies in the U.S., Spain, France and several other countries and may have gained the ability to carry out cyber-sabotage attacks, researchers at the security company Symantec said today.

In what’s being described as a departure from typical hacking attacks that are intended to steal intellectual property, the attackers gained access to industrial control systems used to maintain power grids and oil and gas pipelines and had the ability to take over operations or even damage them.

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