Why eating ice cream is linked to shark attacks

Why are soda and ice cream each linked to violence? This article delivers the final word on what people mean by "correlation does not imply causation."

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  • Ice cream consumption is actually linked to shark attacks.
  • But the relationship is correlative, not causal.
  • It's pretty stunning how media outlets skip over this important detail.
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Watch William Gibson predict internet culture way back in 1997

The famed science fiction author coined the term "cyberspace" before it existed.

  • In 1984, science fiction author William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his debut novel Neuromancer (which he wrote on a typewriter).
  • In a 1997 interview with the BBC, he said we should respond to new technologies with "profound ambivalence."
  • While he doesn't think his original vision of the internet has come to life, he might have been premature given the centralization of power of the digital world.
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Better data (and common sense) can end police brutality

How activism has led to better data regarding police brutality.

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  • The federal government doesn't collect information about police killings in any systemic way. What this means is that we can't actually tell you, as a hard fact, how many people were killed last year.
  • McKesson and his fellow Black Lives Matter organizers have created Mapping Police Violence to create a single-stop database with the most comprehensive data about police killings.
  • When it comes to filing complaints against officers, many states have policies in place that make it quite difficult for them to be held accountable.
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Who is getting rich off you? The insidious big data economy.

Where is your data now? Follow the money.

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  • Your day to day actions on the Internet give businesses personal data that turns you into an ad target – or the opposite.
  • Facebook, for example, allowed landlords to block demographic groups such as African Americans, LGBTQ, or disabled people from seeing housing ads – a violation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
  • Data brokers have crossed a line, but the laws that should regulate them are outdated; just look at the billion-dollar data deal between 23andMe and Big Pharma. Is it ethical?
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FaceTime bug let users access the mic and camera on others' phones

The person whose phone was affected would have been given no indication that others were eavesdropping.


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  • A FaceTime bug enabled iOS users to access the microphones and cameras on the phones of people they tried to call, even when those people didn't answer.
  • Apple has temporarily disabled parts of its services to make such eavesdropping impossible.
  • In general, iOS tends to be the most secure of the popular mobile operating systems, but the recently discovered bug shows all systems have vulnerabilities.
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