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Solar Tsunami and More Auroras Over Canada
Since the first time we posted on the issue, the Sun has been keeping on with beautiful performances and expressions of light, daily CME’s directed at us, solar wind entering Canada, blessing our northern territories with breathtaking sights. It feels as if our star is sending us a message. What could it be? I’ve noticed that all my devices and batteries are losing power and discharging much faster, like ridiculously fast, even on airplane mode prompting me to reflect on how to revert to lower-tech (and less smart devices), or be less dependent on technology. In my quest for retro-vibes, I digged out my professional cameras of yesteryear, but even…
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Yellowknife: Solar Wind Breaks In (11pm, Aug25)
“It was just before midnight on Aug. 25th when a crack opened in Earth’s magnetic field. Solar wind poured through the gap, fueling auroras over Yellowknife, Canada” SpaceWeather.com In the meantime, there have been two fresh CME’s. All three are potentially directed at Earth.
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Incoming
CME from our Star is expected to hit Earth on August 25, 26 – auroras and geomagnetic storms likely for the days to follow – not entirely clear how this will affect technological devices, but it will. Gif made by Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Here is NASA’s beautiful predictive animation of the same space weather event: Some experts believe the CME will be diffuse and minor by the time it gets here, but most seem to agree that it will be a direct hit. For now, the mood is “wait and see”. The Royal Observatory of Belgium announces a direct hit on the 26th and arrival of solar wind…
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Ekinox: La protection de la vie privée est un débat philosophique
À la lumière des dernières informations sur la divulgation forcée d’une longue liste de données personnelles hautement sensibles et aucunement anonymisées, incluant les dates de naissance de tous les Québécois qui osent aller dépenser leur argent au restaurant, ainsi que le partage envisagé de ces données personnelles avec des entités internationales via l’application Ekinox, il est clair que le cadre juridique actuel sur la protection des données au Québec n’existe plus. Si la collection, la conservation, l’utilisation et le partage de données personnelles via une application mobile est effectivement un débat “philosophique”, nous comprenons que les enjeux de protection de la vie privée des Québécois ne font plus partie de…
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Brainstorm On Modernizing Copyright Law for AI and the Internet of Things
This is a very interesting reform but it isn’t going anywhere. https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/693.nsf/eng/00316.html AI can’t author anything. It may create random stuff like fractals or replicate things it sees or learns, like text, or social media comments generated by bot farms, but when it comes to independent AI “art” you just know that something is missing, like a robot playing classical composers on the piano, no matter how perfect, it is super boring, unless it is an exact replica of a human virtuoso’s performance. It is called reproducing a sound recording as a robot. I won’t even get into (the mild horror of) musical compositions by robots. The most incompetent human…
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Protected: AntiGravity Tech
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Protected: Smartphones, Data, Wifi, And Electricity Must Be Free Of Charge To Justify Government Intrusion
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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France: Vente de vrais certificats vaccinaux sur Snapchat via Amazon
Nous avons déjà rapporté des incidents de vente de QR codes vaccinaux sur le dark net dès le mois d’avril 2021, mais ces incidents comme tout ce qui est “dark web” ne forment qu’une infime partie du traffic mondial d’usurpation de tests de dépistage et de certificats vaccinaux. Depuis ses débuts, l’internet de surface (grace à notamment des protections comme l’article 230, Communication Decency Act ) héberge 95% de la cybercriminalité, et notamment vol d’identité de tout genre, demandes de rançon et traffic humain. Évidemment, l’internet de surface est aussi un terrain propice pour la commercialisation de passeports vaccinaux. Grace à la collaboration indispensable de soignants et autres travailleurs de…
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EU: Privacy Policies Defy User Understanding
A large-scale, longitudinal comparison of privacy policies in the EU pre- and postGDPR found that privacy policies increased in lengthwithout demonstrating improvements in sentence structure complexity. Defining Privacy: How Users Interpret Technical Terms in Privacy Policies, Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ; 2021 (3):70–94 This study shows the difficulty in drafting privacy and data reforms in such a way as to achieve the desired effects. It appears that in spite of the GDPR providing that information about data collection and use be communicated “in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language”, the attempt by attorneys to do so results in an increased use of…
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EU: Prohibited Artificial Intelligence Practices
As per Article 5 of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act are prohibited the following practices consisting of placing on the market, putting into service or use of AI systems that consist of : 1.a) Subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness designed to materially distort a person’s behaviour in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm b) (algorithmic bias) Exploiting any of the vulnerabilities of a specific group of persons due to their age, physical or mental disability, in order to materially distort the behaviour of a person pertaining to that group in a manner that causes or is likely…
