Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 17, 2020

Brave Browser files GPDR complaint against Google, claims Google violates "purpose limitation principle"; Study suggests that mothers have implicit bias about emotional expression between genders, fathers don't; Researchers suggest there is no underlying cause to mood disorders; Microsoft Teams buckled when telecommuting Europe showed up for work; and a Steem essay discussing essential aspects of remote learning







Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

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


First posted on my Steem blog: SteemIt, SteemPeak*, StemGeeks.

  1. Formal GDPR complaint against Google’s internal data free-for-all - Brave's Dr. Johnny Ryan spent about six months studying the way that Google handles its massive data pool and now claims that the company is in violation of the GPDR's "purpose limitation principle". This principle demands that customer personal data should be ring-fenced and only used for the narrow purpose behind its collection. In contrast to that principle, Ryan claims that Google's internal data usage amounts to a "free for all", and the Brave Browser company has filed suit. In support of that claim, the article says:

    For six months Dr Ryan asked Google one simple question: “What do you do with my data?” Despite several rounds of correspondence, and having the right to this information under Article 15 of the GDPR, Google refused to properly engage with the question.



    Google is a black box.

    and

    Google’s purposes are so vaguely defined as to have no meaning or limit. The result is an internal data free-for-all that infringes the GDPR’s purpose limitation principle.

    Brave has also released the document, Inside the Black Box. The company claims that if Google is forced to comply with the GPDR, it would require a functional break-up of the company. It also seems likely that enforcement against Google would also drive other Internet giants to revisit their own internal data-sharing arrangements.

  2. Implicit attitudes about gender and emotion are associated with mothers’ but not fathers’ emotion socialization. - I can only see the Abstract, so there's not much for me to summarize. Here are a couple quotes:
    Results indicated that mothers show more favorable attitudes toward sadness and anger expression by girls versus boys. Fathers showed no preference in either IAT, suggesting a lack of bias about the expression of sadness and anger.
    and
    Findings suggest that mothers, but not fathers, may possess gender-related implicit biases about emotion expression in children, with implications for socialization practices.
    -h/t Daniel Lemire

  3. What if psychological disorders don’t have any underlying cause? - This article discusses ideas from Sverre Urnes Johnson and colleague, Asle Hoffart. According to Johnson, the traditional model for psychology is borrowed from other fields of medicine, and it postulates the existence of some sort of underlying problem that creates mood disorders. In this model, mood problems like anxiety, depression, insomnia, or social isolation are all symptoms of an underlying problem. Johnson and Hoffart argue, however, "that the symptoms constitute the disorder itself." According to their model, mental disorders should be viewed as clusters or networks of symptoms that affect each other and sometimes organize into vicious circles. If this model is correct, they suggest that treatment should begin by addressing the most urgent, or pressing, symptoms first. Johnson also argues that their model does not trivialize the role of traumatic events or genetics in the development of mood disorders, but he suggests that addressing the symptoms in treatment might be just as useful as exploring heredity and trauma. As-of now, this treatment model is only theoretical. It has been supported by some statistical studies, but no studies have compared the effectiveness of treatments that follow this model against treatments based upon the traditional model. Jan Ivar Røssberg was not involved in the research, but says it's not controversial. He said the idea was first explored in the 1980s, but modern statistical techniques are giving it new life. However, he also says that its human nature to look for causes, and he thinks that practitioners will not readily adopt a model that omits a search for an underlying cause. -h/t RealClear Science

  4. Microsoft Teams went down for two hours as Europe logged in - Subtitle: MS Teams seems unprepared for the unprecedented high number of remote workers. As of Monday afternoon, it is still unclear whether the problem has been completely resolved, because DownDetector is still showing scattered outages. The root cause is not known, but since the outage began at 8:30 am UTC, it is believed that the site was not equipped to handle the load when Europe's new telecommuting work force started their work day, en masse.





  5. Steem @ayijufridar: Education without Meeting in Class: Coronavirus's Effect | - In this post, the author talks about education needs as students around the world are forced by the COVID-19 pandamic to shift to online learning programs. Four elements that the article suggests are important include: (i) Equitable Internet network; (ii) Reliable system; (iii) adjustments to learner culture; and (iv) responsive attitudes from students. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @ayijufridar.)




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