Salon.com > Evan Ratliff

Web users demand privacy, then give it up

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Via TechDirt, a less-than-shocking illustration about Web users and our approach to privacy: We say we want it, but do little to obtain it. A survey of privacy attitudes in the U.K. found that 84 percent of Internet users claimed they would not divulge details of their income online. Later in the survey, the same group was asked to divulge their income data. Eighty-seven percent of them did so. Hello, cognitive dissonance!

It's worth noting that the survey was carried out by AOL, and the sample size was only 1,000 people, so skepticism of the methodology is warranted. Not to mention that there's no penalty for lying about your income in such cases, as I always do (I mean, why not aspire to a better life?). But the results don't seem far off what many other surveys have long established, e.g., that most of us will and do routinely trade away personal data for convenience or meager rewards.

Rat-brain robot alters direction of human history … again!

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:03:00 +0000

The world of science and tech news is downright exuberant over the announcement of a robot controlled by the neurons of a rat brain. In case you missed it (and I don't see how you could have!), Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading, unveiled the cute little creation earlier this week. Gordon, as the would-be ratbot is known, follows the whims of 300,000 lab-grown rat neurons, whose signals are picked up by 60 electrodes and transmitted to Gordon via a Bluetooth connection.

You can watch little Gordon wander around, rodentlike, here and here.

The dramatic discovery leads some to ask, is this the answer to Alzheimer's and other memory disorders? (You may be surprised to find that the University of Reading press release has already settled the question: "The key aim is that eventually this will lead to a better understanding of development and of diseases and disorders which affect the brain such as Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, stroke and brain injury.")

The grave new threat we face from music

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:46:00 +0000

Iasos

I don't want to alarm any Machinist readers, but it has come to my attention that there are kids out there getting high on musical arrangements. Talk show host and USA Today columnist Kim Komando is on the case, with a column thankfully being reprinted far and wide. In sum, your children or other loved ones might, at this very moment, be wearing giant headphones and getting dangerously stoned on the freshest of binaural beats. Per Komando's alert:

For binaural beats to work, you must use headphones. Different sounds are played in each ear. The sounds combine in your brain to create a new frequency. This frequency corresponds to brain wave frequencies.
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Update: Cyberattacks against Georgia

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Regarding my post from Tuesday about the cyberwar situation in Georgia, more skepticism is emerging about the Russian government's involvement in the attacks, and its failure to take the more decisive action of unplugging the Georgians entirely. That ChannelWeb story mentions security expert Gadi Evron's posts over at CircleID, where he asserts that "it doesn't seem Internet infrastructure is directly attacked." Similarly, the folks at the Information Warfare Monitor conclude:

Active route hijacking by Russian hackers, redirecting traffic to Russian telecom operators. If confirmed it would suggest that Russia ISPs are capable of enforcing an information blockage against a "cyber-locked" Georgia. This now appears implausible.
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Are you losing your memory thanks to the Internet?

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:05:00 +0000

What does the Internet actually do to your memory? Over at the Britannica blog, University of Chicago sociologist James Evans has added another thoughtful entry in an ongoing discussion of whether and how the Internet is changing the way we think. Writer Nicholas Carr launched the discussion in this month's Atlantic Monthly, with his pessimistic take on the topic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Although the debate prompted by Carr's piece has been wide ranging, the general issue at hand is whether and how our time spent online, hopping from one site to the next, affects the way we read, the way we think and the way we research (although often the discussions seem to reduce to just the question of reading online versus reading books). But I'm also interested in one aspect they touch on but don't explicitly address: the effect of the Web and gadget usage on how and what we remember.

How creepy is Google’s Street View?

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:00:00 +0000

Since its launch a little over a year ago, Google Street View has been the pseudo-comedy privacy scare that keeps on giving. Just in the past few weeks, we've been treated to such instant Street View classics as the house on fire (prompting a commenter-driven rush on Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three jokes), the wedding proposal (with audience participation), and the man sleeping one off in front of his house (a close friend of his had just died, isn't that hilarious). These join iconic Street View bloopers like man climbing fence and a bloated list of other occasionally funny or unnecessarily cruel finds.

Cyberwar rages on in Georgia

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:45:00 +0000

(Updated below)

Amid the obviously more serious real-word consequences in the ongoing Russia-Georgia conflict, the parallel virtual battle has been garnering a fair amount of attention. In sum, Russian hackers have been assaulting and disabling a number of Georgia's government Web sites -- largely, its seems, by employing botnet-driven denial of service attacks -- since the inception of the conflict. As always with this kind of cyberwarfare, it's difficult to sort out whether the Russian government is actively supporting the attacks, or just the tacit beneficiary of some of its gung-ho and computer-savvy citizens. As of a few minutes ago, the main government site in Georgia remained down. There have been reports of attacks on Russian sites as well. Monday the Wall Street Journal cited investigators who claimed to have traced the attack to a notorious cybergang called the Russian Business Network, but Wired's Danger Room found skeptics of that assessment.

Hyping the Chevy Volt

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:36:00 +0000

Chevy Volt screenshot

Is General Motors setting a new record for vaporware peddling? Given that Farhad Manjoo opened up the Machinist to auto coverage a few weeks ago, this seems fair game: Like me, you may have noticed during Olympic TV coverage the nonstop GM commercials touting the coming pinnacle of automobile evolution, the Chevy Volt. (Is there any ad that doesn't run nonstop during the Olympics? What happened to our endemic advertising diversity?) Aiming to be the first commercially available plug-in hybrid, the Volt -- as the ads inform us -- will travel 40 miles without using a drop of gas. "That's an American revolution," it concludes. USA! USA! Let's all head out and buy one...in 2010.

Cellphones on planes, take 60

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:58:00 +0000

Is the tide turning for in-flight gabbing? At the end of last week, the Department of Transportation reignited the perennial cellphone-on-planes discussion with a survey showing that Americans are surprisingly ambivalent on the question. The data can be carved several ways, but the general take-away is that only about 45 percent of people surveyed thought phones "definitely" or "probably" shouldn't be allowed in-flight. Younger folks, not surprisingly, were more open to the practice.

This comes on the heels of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's approval of Rep. Peter DeFazio's, D-Ore., hilariously titled "Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace Act of 2008," which would -- under the assumption that the FAA will eventually lift its ban on cellphones in flight, as the EU already has -- establish a blanket federal prohibition on "voice communications using a mobile communications device" on board any scheduled flight. The bill is now headed for a full vote in the House. Meanwhile, internationally, Dubai-based Emirates Airlines announced on Thursday that it was moving ahead with fleet-wide plans to allow passengers to use their phones in-flight.

O say, ma, been laden forever!

Fri, 12 May 2006 11:31:00 +0000

Memo: NSA headquarters, Fort Meade
Automated data mining analysis, transcript #HS48652-6
Target: Evan Ratliff
Communication: Domestic e-mail intercepts
Keyword extraction recommendation: Significant terror risk. Operations imminent.

From: eratliff@*********.com
To: samschaffer@*****.com

Yo, Schaffe! What's up?! How's life down South? Tried calling your cell, but you must have been out hitting the bars pretty hard last night. Did you check out that little home-style restaurant I told you about? The house specialty is lamb chop, OH SNAP!! You'll love it.

drink a PBR for me,
e

From: eratliff@*********.com
To: samschaffer@*****.com

How've you been, lad? In trouble with the wife again, sounds like! Don't worry, it'll blow over. Not much happening in New York, except this bloody cold weather. Luckily my grandma knitted me that afghan this Christmas. I'd never heard of an afghan before, it's like some kind of super warm blanket. Thank frickin God too, since our radiator is shot. Man, every year I dream about buying a big plot of land down south, with a few blueberry bushes and a dog roving around the yard. Just quit urban life forever. Sounds like Heaven right now.