Bruce Schneier: "At SXSW earlier this month, CEO Eric Schmidt tried to reassure the audience by saying that he was 'pretty sure that information within Google is now safe from any government's prying eyes.' A more accurate statement might be, 'Your data is safe from governments, except for the ways we don't know about and the ways we cannot tell you about. And, of course, we still have complete access to it all, and can sell it at will to whomever we want.'"
Eric Schmidt on the NSA* (*translated from original bullshitese)
Backlash in China brewing against rampant face-recognition in daily life
Over at Technode, Shi Jiayi synthesizes recent stories in Chinese media showing how China's ever-surveilled population is getting sick of rampant face-recognition, and is speaking out. Face-recognition tech has penetrated all sectors of everyday life in China. As Jiayi notes, it's "it is now used in stores for pay-by-face, in hotels and public transportation for… READ THE REST
Amazon is using Pinkertons for union-busting surveillance
Lauren Gurley at Vice's Motherboard has broken the story about the obsessive monitoring of labor and environmental activists at Amazon facilities in Europe by Pinkerton merceneries. From the source: A trove of more than two dozen internal Amazon reports reveal in stark detail the company's obsessive monitoring of organized labor and social and environmental movements… READ THE REST
French government proposes new ban on filming and photographing police
On November 20, 2020, the French government presented a new security bill. Article 24 of the bill outlaws the dissemination of photos and videos that feature, "the image of the face or any other element of identification of an official of the national police or of a soldier of the national gendarmerie when acting within… READ THE REST
Markup Pro makes it simple to find and share what you want off the web
Gathering notes off various web pages across the web feels like it should be a simple process. Just scoot through your assorted pages, copy the text, graphics, images, and other elements that you want, paste them into your notes and you're all set. Of course, anybody who's ever actually tried to take notes online is… READ THE REST
This espresso press can turn out a brilliantly powerful brew in minutes and it's less than $50
If you're a coffee-lover, specifically, a lover of espresso, then you already know that picking up an espresso machine is not cheap. Those machines pressurize boiling water, then fire it at finely ground coffee beans for a richer, more caffeine-fueled result than your normal drip-brewed coffee. That specialization is why many won't pay for a… READ THE REST
Get over 90 hours of top instruction on Calculus, Number Theory, and more with this Mathematics training package
Even if you're never broken out in a cold sweat at the thought of having to complete a problem, know this – math anxiety is 100% real. And we aren't just talking about 7-year-olds who suffer from stomach aches driven by their fear of math class. Turns out, even the anxiety of teachers who have… READ THE REST