Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
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“Anonymised” data lies at the core of everything from modern medical research to personalised recommendations and modern AI techniques. Unfortunately, according to a paper, successfully anonymising data is practically impossible for any complex dataset. An anonymised dataset is supposed to have had all personally identifiable information removed from it, while retaining a core of useful…
The Institute of Economic Affairs is facing two official investigations after it emerged that the thinktank offered potential US donors access to UK government ministers as it raised cash for research to promote free-trade deals demanded by hardline Brexiters. The Charity Commission announced on Monday that it had opened a regulatory compliance case into the…
The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in the tech giant’s biggest ever data breach, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box. A whistleblower has revealed to…
Uber has fired more than 20 employees after a company investigation into sexual harassment claims and workplace culture. The terminations were announced at a company-wide meeting on Tuesday, details of which were first leaked to and reported by the New York Times and Bloomberg News. Uber confirmed the departures to the Guardian. The identities of…
Fatalities confirmed by Greater Manchester police after reports of explosion at pop concert Injuries also reported Witnesses reported hearing at least one explosion at the end of the set Police are asking people to avoid the area I and my sister, along with a lot of others were seeing Ariana Grande perform at Manchester Arena, and…
Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the world’s press before him and told them they were liars. “The press, honestly, is out of control,” he said. “The public doesn’t believe you any more.” CNN was described as “very fake news… story after story is bad”. The BBC was “another beauty”. That…
Last Tuesday, for a few hours, Badlands National Park defied presidential orders. “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years #climate,” it tweeted. The account went on to discuss ocean acidity, carbon dioxide and the founding mission of the century-old National Parks Service,…
London has breached its annual air pollution limits just five days into 2017, a “shameful reminder of the severity of London’s air pollution”, according to campaigners. By law, hourly levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide must not be more than 200 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) more than 18 times in a whole year, but late…
Members of the public in European states including France, Belgium, Germany and the UK greatly overestimate their country’s Muslim population and the rate at which it is growing. An Ipsos Mori survey that measured the gap between public perception and reality in 40 countries in 2016 found French respondents were by far the most likely…
The government is to formally adopt a definition of what constitutes antisemitism, which includes over-sweeping condemnation of Israel, with Theresa May saying the measure will help efforts to combat hate crime against Jews. Britain will become one of the first countries to use this definition of antisemitism, as agreed last May at a conference of…