• DeepMind is developing one algorithm to rule them all | VentureBeat

  “DeepMind is trying to combine deep learning and algorithms, creating the one algorithm to rule them all: a deep learning model that can learn how to emulate any algorithm, generating an algorithm-equivalent model that can work with real-world data.”

  Tags: ITGS, algorithm, people and machines, deepmind, knowledge

  • – By dr tech

• Waste electronics will weigh more than the Great Wall of China – BBC News

  “The “mountain” of waste electronic and electrical equipment discarded in 2021 will weigh more than 57 million tonnes, researchers have estimated.

  That is heavier than the Great Wall of China – the planet’s heaviest artificial object.”

  Tags: ITGS, e-waste, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

• Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets | Twitter | The Guardian

  “Twitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources.

  The social media platform examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries – the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed.”

  Tags: ITGS, bias, algorithm, twitter, misinformation, politics and government

  • – By dr tech

• Egypt detains artist robot Ai-Da before historic pyramid show | Egypt | The Guardian

  “But because of “security issues” that may include concerns that she is part of a wider espionage plot, both Ai-Da and her sculpture were held in Egyptian customs for 10 days before being released on Wednesday, sparking a diplomatic fracas.”

  Tags: ITGS, ai, robot, people and, people, and, machines

  • – By dr tech

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• US schools gave kids laptops during the pandemic. Then they spied on them | Jessa Crispin | The Guardian

  “The problem is, a lot of those electronics were being used to monitor students, even combing through private chats, emails and documents all in the name of protecting them. More than 80% of surveyed teachers and 77% of surveyed high school students told the CDT that their schools use surveillance software on those devices, and the more reliant students are on those electronics, unable to afford supplementary phones or tablets, the more they are subjected to scrutiny.”

  Tags: ITGS, laptop, surveillance, education, school, privacy and anonymity

  • – By dr tech

• A new app is failing India’s fight against child malnutrition

  ““Most of us anganwadi workers don’t have enough education to understand these apps,” she added. “We don’t get enough network in the village to use them, and we don’t earn enough to recharge the phone on time. So what is the point?””

  Tags: ITGS, app, technocentric, India, child, people and, people, and, machines

  • – By dr tech

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After interviewing my father on his thought, view and experience with technology, I have learn something that I never knew before. It is interesting to me because I get to know some technology in the past that exist when I wasn’t born yet and it’s what people in my father’s generation used. I also learn about how technology is being used much more in these days where the pandemic is still happening.

THE PAST

This is the first computer my dad used in 1986. (maybe not exactly this model but something very similar to this one)

• The screen size is around 17 inches.
• It looks like a television.
• He used this computer to produce a report and print out by dot matrix printer.

My dad first use the internet more than 20 years ago for some research. His view on technology is that it is a good tool for speed up work and it allows us to search information online much more easily than going to a library which is what people do in the past. In the other hand, he also thinks that technology is expensive and require maintenance.

THE PRESENT

Nowadays, my dad is working from home. He uses Microsoft programs a lot such as word, excel, powerpoint and outlook. He said that his job requires quite a lot of knowledge on using technology, especially when working from home. (Even though sometimes he still asks me on how to do certain tasks on some software eg. he once asked me about how to use master slides in Microsoft Powerpoint)

The company that my dad is working in is now developing facial recognition technology for scanning employee’s face before entering the building. I think this is very interesting how technology is developing from using smart card for identity to now using biometric!

THE FUTURE

From my dad’s view, he thinks that technology will develop very fast that he doesn’t think that he can keep up with it. Luckily, his company are providing trainings for employees. He thinks that in the future, the company might get rid of most paper based tasks and only keep necessary one such as some documents that still needs to be sign by hand.

He thinks that security and privacy are the main concerns with technology. Using online platform is good if you use them properly and doesn’t let them cause harm for yourself. I think that he concerns about security and privacy because growing up, he didn’t use these technology and only started using them in his early 20s.

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• Brazilian Workers Paid 70 Cents an Hour to Transcribe TikToks

  “He quit the same way he’d been given the job: through a WhatsApp message. He had neither a contract nor any documents regulating his employment.

  For Felipe, the plan to make a little quick money became a hellish experience. With TikTok’s short-form video format, much of the audio that needed transcription was only a few seconds long. The payment, made in U.S. dollars, was supposed to be $14 for every hour of audio transcribed. Amassing the secondslong clips into an hour of transcribed audio took Felipe about 20 hours. That worked out to only about 70 cents per hour — or 3.85 Brazilian reals, about three-quarters of Brazil’s minimum wage.”

  Tags: ITGS, tiktok, people and machines, business and employment

  • – By dr tech

• ‘Email is a zombie that keeps rising from the dead’: the endless pursuit of Inbox Zero | Email | The Guardian

  ““A full inbox is a constant reminder of what we have not done and can impact our sense of accomplishment,” Lukins says. “Inbox Zero is a powerful strategy we can implement to increase our sense of control about our workflow. Each time we achieve a task, we receive a hit of dopamine that is physically reinforcing, and [we] feel the psychological relief of achievement.””

  Tags: ITGS, inbox zero, email, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

• How fraudsters can use the forgotten details of your online life to reel you in | Scams | The Guardian

  ““The social engineering type of attack does not tend to scale [up] easily given the time and effort required to succeed, and therefore is more often than not used by individuals rather than the ‘call centre’ approach of criminal enterprises,” Goddard says. “The trigger to target an individual could be targeted, or opportunistic such as overhearing a conversation or getting access to sensitive or exploitable information like a picture or bank statement.””

  Tags: ITGS, social engineering, scam, fraud, identity theft, metadata

  • – By dr tech

• Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen details company’s misleading efforts on 60 Minutes – CBS News

  “Frances Haugen: When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other, the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.

  ‘Ethnic violence’ including Myanmar in 2018 when the military used Facebook to launch a genocide. “

  Tags: ITGS, facebook, social media, misinformation, fakenews, integrity, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

• Facebook harms children and is damaging democracy, claims whistleblower | Facebook | The Guardian

  “Facebook knows its systems lead teenagers to anorexia-related content.

  The company had to “break the glass” and turn back on safety settings after the 6 January Washington riots.

  Facebook intentionally targets teenagers and children under 13.

  Monday’s outage that brought down Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp meant that for more than five hours Facebook could not “destabilise democracies”.”

  Tags: ITGS, facebook, social media, misinformation, fakenews, integrity, people and machines, children, democracy, whistleblower

  • – By dr tech

• ‘Dystopian world’: Singapore patrol robots stoke fears of surveillance state | Singapore | The Guardian

  “Singapore has trialled patrol robots that blast warnings at people engaging in “undesirable social behaviour”, adding to an arsenal of surveillance technology in the tightly controlled city-state that is fuelling privacy concerns.”

  Tags: ITGS, facial recognition, singapore, robots, surveillance, state

  • – By dr tech

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I believe models  help us in thinking and problem solving  it is a visual summary and helps us visualize all aspects of something,  its also more interesting to use models as there are more pictures and graphics and structure than just reading, take the iceberg model for example it takes us through a step by step process of what is the problem and how we can come up with a solution, it takes us through what happened, then general trends and patterns of the problem locally or globally, what are influencing those patterns and how we can come up with the solution, this model helps us recognise the problem, what could be causing it and seeing if there is a viable solution.

Another example could be the UK subway map, this at first glance could be very complicated and could he a hinderance, for example if english isnt your first language this map could be a struggle to read or if you are colour blind. But other than that this map shows a clear and colour coded map, with labels that show you where you are and how to get to your next location.

Models also help as the newer generation prefer more visual graphics over texts due to their short attention span, so in conclusion I do believe models can be a very huge benefit to use.

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• “Don’t Believe Proven Liars”: The Absolute Minimum Standard of Prudence in Merger Scrutiny | Electronic Frontier Foundation

  “In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19b, and promised users that it wouldn’t harvest their data and mix it with the surveillance troves it got from Facebook and Instagram. It lied. Years later, Facebook mixes data from all of its properties, mining it for data that ultimately helps advertisers, political campaigns and fraudsters find prospects for whatever they’re peddling. Today, Facebook is in the process of acquiring Giphy, and while Giphy currently doesn’t track users when they embed GIFs in messages, Facebook could start doing that anytime”

  Tags: ITGS, facebook, data, data mining, surveillance capitalism

  • – By dr tech

• What Police Can Do With Social Media Spy Tool ShadowDragon

  ““Social media surveillance technologies, such as the software acquired by Michigan State Police, are often introduced under the false premise that they are public safety and accountability tools. In reality, they endanger Black and marginalized communities,””

  Tags: ITGS, social media, shadowdragon, facebook, government and politics, surveillance

  • – By dr tech

• Modelers Project A Calming Of The Pandemic In The U.S. This Winter : Shots – Health News : NPR

  “or its latest update, which it released Wednesday, the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub combined nine different mathematical models from different research groups to get an outlook for the pandemic for the next six months.

  “Any of us who have been following this closely, given what happened with delta, are going to be really cautious about too much optimism,” says Justin Lessler at the University of North Carolina, who helps run the hub. “But I do think that the trajectory is towards improvement for most of the country,” he says.

  The modelers developed four potential scenarios, taking into account whether or not childhood vaccinations take off and whether a more infectious new variant should emerge. “

  Tags: ITGS, models, prediction, data, covid-19, GIGO, reliability, integrity, mining

  • – By dr tech

• Anti-productivity quota law passes as Amazon still surveils workers

  “On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that directly affects “mega-retailers” like Amazon, and how these companies use algorithms to manage warehouse workers. Mega-retailers are those that employ more than 1,000 warehouse workers, and they include one of Amazon’s main competitors, Walmart.”

  Tags: ITGS, amazon, law, policies and standards, algorithms, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

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So what are Models and what is their actual impact on students?

Models actually are?

Models -“A model of an object is a physical representation that shows what it looks like or how it works.” to make it more understandable is the graphical representation of something. There are lots of models like that or that

Models improve our learning 

1. They make content easier to remember.
2. Making the text more colorful and enjoyable to read rather than boring text.
3. And they actually help to explain something and make it more understandable to the reader.

For example, when you are reading about science let’s take physics didn’t you notice that fact that every since book if it’s not every page has a graphical illustration of the text that makes it simpler like that one.

So we came to that model actually useful yeahh!!

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• The great data robbery

  “A major data breach at Phetchabun Hospital last week served as a loud wake-up call to state and private organisations to pay attention to their cybersecurity measures, as experts warned cybercrimes could become more commonplace in the years to come.

  The breach involved the data of 10,095 patients, including their names and dates of admission and discharge.”

  Tags: ITGS, data, breach, security, hospitals, thailand, cybersecurity

  • – By dr tech

• Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful effect on teenage girls, leak reveals | Instagram | The Guardian

  ““We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said a slide from one internal presentation in 2019, seen by the Wall Street Journal. “Thirty-two per cent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” a subsequent presentation reported in March 2020.”

  Tags: ITGS, facebook, instagram, body image, photoshop, social media, people and machines

  • – By dr tech

• Facebook has made it easier than ever to profit off teen girls’ insecurity

  “As adolescents and young adults fled Facebook for platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook knew its long-term survival depended on winning over that demographic. But the savvy business move had a different, less public price tag.

  Caught up in recommendations from a powerful algorithm designed to keep them engaged, some teen girls found Instagram worsened their body image, according to a new Wall Street Journal investigation. Users even pinned feelings of increased depression, anxiety, and suicidal thinking on the app.”

  Tags: ITGS, facebook, teenagers, people and machines, social media

  • – By dr tech

• How Instagram transformed our personal lives

  “How Instagram transformed our personal lives
  Ten years after its first post, the app exerts an almost inconceivable degree of influence over our culture, psychology and relationships”

  Tags: ITGS, privacy

  • – By neoooo

• Want to save the Earth? Then don’t buy that shiny new iPhone | John Naughton | The Guardian

  “But it isn’t. As I write, I have a Fairphone 3+ on the desk beside me. It’s a very capable, nicely designed, dual-sim Android phone. In just seconds, I snap off the back of the case with a fingernail and remove the battery. Other modules of the phone, including the camera, can be removed and replaced without elaborate tools or expertise. And once it’s done you snap the case shut and press the power button. And you can buy it online for £399. Over in the US, the Framework laptop has just come on to the market. It’s a thin, lightweight, high-performance 13.5in notebook that can be upgraded, customised and repaired in ways that no other notebook can. It’s even available as a kit of modules that users can change and assemble themselves, installing only the modules they want as plug-in units. Think of it as Lego for geeks.”

  Tags: ITGS, fairphone, framework laptop, e-waste, sustainability, hardware

  • – By dr tech

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You might wonder whether models are useful or not? So, the main question here is

“Do models help or hinder our thinking and problem solving?”

Let’s take a look at some examples to see whether models help OR hinder or thinking!

London Underground map

I would say that this model helps our thinking.

• Each Tube lines are colour coded in different colours so, it is very easy to identify each lines.
• This map is simplified from curve or wavy lines of the real railway to straight lines so, the map looks organised.
• The map contains lots of information and words but it is arranged nicely.
• Important symbols about stations which are appropriate for people using wheel chairs or some stations that offer trains between cities are included on the map which is really useful.

Personally, I had use this tube map during my London trip in 2019 and I found that it is easy to use and it didn’t take long for me to figure out what is it all about. Also, it is quite memorable! I used District line and Piccadilly line very often and after a few days, I did remember some of the station names in those lines!

Bangkok Underground Map

I think this model hinder our thinking.

• This map doesn’t include much information. For example, there are no stations names except for the destination of each lines which doesn’t make sense because people won’t be able to use this map to go somewhere they want.
• Each lines are colour coded with different colours but unfortunately, that doesn’t help because it does look quite complicated. It is not something that you look at it and you have an idea what it means.

The Iceberg Model

I have used this model and it actually helps me to think in a logical way.

• The model looks simple. The iceberg picture already represent the meaning or the purpose of the model.
• There are only short sentences or phrases but it covers information needed.
• It makes us think in more depth about a topic which is useful because we might come up with a better answer!
• It makes us think in steps which guide us to expand our ideas and thoughts.

CONCLUSION!

In my opinion, models do help our thinking. Models represent information in a way that we can visualize them. Models simplified some complex information into a simple diagrams that we can remember much more easily. Use of graphics or colours also help. Models can help communicate our ideas or to understand processes needed to complete tasks.

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