Science and technology micro-summaries for July 17, 2019

Astronaut is a popular profession for kids in China, but kids in America and the UK would rather be Youtubers; FaceApp application claims perpetual right to use your photos; Neuralink wants to embed sensors in human brains next year; Security vulnerability in the Zoom application; Crowdsourcing the training of youtube's recommendation engine

Straight from my RSS feed:

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

1. American kids would much rather be YouTubers than astronauts - In a LEGO sponsored, Harris survey, kds were asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and given the choice of 5 professions. Kids in China ranked astronaut 1^st. Kids in the US and UK ranked it 5^th. Kids in the US and UK ranked Vlogger/Youtuber 1^st. Other professions included teacher, professional athlete, and musician. Teacher ranked 2^nd in all three countries. Chinese kids ranked Vlogger/Youtuber last. Musician ranked 3^rd in China with professional athlete 4^th. The 3^rd and 4^th slots were were reversed from that in both the US and UK.


2. FaceApp security concerns: Russians now own all your old photos - This sort of thing is also why I stopped signing online petitions and most of the online personality quizzes. It's usually just an excuse to get you to give something of value away for free. Your photos, in this case. Your e-mail address and profile information in the case of online petitions and personality quizzes. When social media moves entirely to blockchain (and matures), it will enable accounting so that the people who want information from you will be required to pay you for its use.


3. Elon Musk's Neuralink hopes to put sensors in human brains next year - After completion of ongoing testing in rats, Musk's company, Neuralink, claims that it will be able to use its sewing-machine-like robot to implant threads in the human brain. In the early term, the company says it plans to use the technolgy to do things like restoring site and hearing, or to help amputees to manipulate their environment. In the longer term, Musk has said that he believes a technology like this will be necessary to prevent humans from becoming obsolete and displaced in the race against machine intelligence.


4. Zoom Vulnerability - The vulnerability enables remote access to Zoom calls, and also provides a vector for a DOS attack against Mac computers. Even uninstalling the Zoom software doesn't completely fix the vulnerability. I've been reading information security blogs and e-mail lists since the mid-1990s, and after all these years it's stunning to still read the phrase, "Zoom didn't take the vulnerability seriously:". As Schneier says, this is the reason why we have full disclosure. It's proven to be the only way to get many companies to pay attention.


5. How to Take Back YouTube's Algorithm - This might be something that the political left and political right can actually agree upon. @davidpakman suggests ways to steer youtube recommendations towards independent content by training the algorithm. First, he suggests using subscribe, like, or comment on the channels that you want to see more from (or even dislike, as it also counts as engagement). Next, he suggests using the three-dot menu (^...) to provide feedback on the recommended videos in your side-bar that are sourced from the over-represented corporate media, thereby telling the algorithm that you don't want to see as many videos from corporate media sources. (@davidpakman will receive 5% of the rewards from this post.)

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