The Offline Report

It's been a few months since driverless cars or "autonomous vehicles" (AVs) have made headlines, but some developments since then provide context and give the public some terms to use as we share roads with these heavy fast-moving machines in the future. One development is a broadcast of an interview with Duke University's robotics lab director advocating driverless cars should pass a vision test. Up to 50 separate AV manufacturing companies are creating driverless cars. An autonomous vehicle "sees" the terrain with a combination 1) radar, 2) lidar (Light Detection And Ranging), and 3) ultrasound. A "complex data fusion" technology is required to tie all three components together, but that fusion technology isn't subject to vision tests in California the way human drivers are. In May, tech reporter Molly Wood interviewed former Navy Pilot, and current Duke University HAL Director (HAL stands for Humans and Autonomy Lab, the former MIT lab tha...

Which is the bigger priority for our society - privacy or surveillance? In other words, is "privacy" important because a) lack of privacy does harm to a person, or b) surveillance conducted by institutions corrupts the ones doing the spying? In the table below we lay out article quotes and recent anecdotes, and list whether it was more illustrative of the importance of privacy or the corrupting powers of surveillance. Getting these fleshed out is important. As Solove says in his widely cited paper 'I've Got Nothing to Hide', and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy , "In many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests because courts, legislators, and others fail even to recognize that privacy is implicated. It is therefore of paramount importance that we continue to work on developing a conception of privacy." Solove indeed developed a fine four-part conception of the harms resulting from lack of privacy in said paper. And the...

Resist the internet. Embrace the internet. That's an Ipad Mount Clear Shower Curtain Liner Tablet or Phone Holder Waterproof 8 Gauge EVA 72x72 Bathroom: Home & Kitchen available now on Amazon. Read the 85 customer reviews . via Leah Garchick, the SF Chronicle. (Peak tech is a myth. There's no going back.) ---------------------- Further Reading: Is there a right kind of screen time? The AAP put out its first set of guidelines that encourages screen time for kids. Sleep and physical activity are interfered with by screens. AMA found a "significant association between higher frequency of modern digital media use, and subsequent symptoms of ADHD."    marketplace.org (audio only) The Tyranny of Convenience.    nytimes.com This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

("In order to deal with the upsurge in ecological, economic, educational, legal and health issues associated with more and bigger wildfires in the West, Dr. Schoennagel proclaims, 'We need to develop a new fire culture.'" - Sara Vowell, NYTimes.com June 13 2018) Here's an item from one story deserving of expansion into a larger feature story of its own: From one of multiple thoroughly reported stories on the Carr Fire in today's "edition" of the San Francisco Chronicle (July 29, 2018 page A11 headline "Fires merge, forcing evacuations") ( online version of same story here, with different headline "Mendocino fires combine, moving into Lake County and forcing evacuations" ): "One of the problems that firefighters are facing right now is just lack of resources," said Brian May, spokesperson for the state's Office of Emergency Services. "With all of these fires burning across the state, they are just tapped out....

Saturday Aug 4, 2018 "But over the past few years the podcasters have become a significant cultural phenomenon, spiritual entrepreneurs who are filling the gap left as traditional religious organizations erode and modernity frays our face-to-face connections with communities and institutions."    nytimes.com Thursday Aug 2, 2018 Electic Car evolution from late 1800s to now.    advancedenergy.org Wireless Charging Unleashed:     automotivenews.com Wednesday Aug 1, 2018 2009: Chicago's solar-powered EV station.    inhabitat.com 2012: Solvang's EV filling stations.    syvnews.com Tuesday July 31, 2018 "Public trust in autonomous cars has dropped since the fatal Uber crash in March, but Tandon said his cars are best suited to rebuild that trust. That explains the suite of digital screens and the candy-colored paint scheme, he said. 'We wanted it to look kind of like a school bus,' he said. And who doesn’...

(* Denotes update bliki appendage, below .) If this writer had more time and resources this product would roll out before the end of August to restaurants in San Francisco, then across the U.S. and beyond. But this writer has no time so if you happen upon this post: steal this idea and make it happen. In the olden days of the 1990's, restaurants would offer at the hostess stand a glass bowl full of free matchbooks with their logo address and phone number printed on the cover. Coffee tables at home and city apartments would display in their own glass bowl a variety matchbook collection showing that apartment dweller had visited the hippest restaurants in town. Why not do the same with reusable glass straws? A few hurdles stand in the way of feasibility: glass straws, as of right now, are expensive. They'll be more expensive with customized logos. However with greater numbers of customers, manufacturing costs could drop. And straws-as-advertisements in posh city apartments o...

We love the internet. Many of us love newspapers. For digital newspaper consumers, a better user interface could help us love them more. Today's design feature: the "prominent 'edition' homepage alternative" representing that day's edition. For eager-to-be-informed readers, the path to today's edition is a tiny link hiding in the witness protection program on a regional newspaper's "branding" homepage. Some readers want breaking news. Smart readers who plan ahead are actors, not reactors and want a slice of news, that day's "edition." And many digital readers want to see the same view that paper's print subscribers see -- that reader's retired parents, for example -- on that same day. While the homepage is a nicely displayed "branding" advertisement, it is often a heap of time-indistinguishable linked story heds. Some headlines were published in that day's printed edition; some heds point to "resou...

We love the internet. Many of us love newspapers. For digital newspaper consumers, a better user interface could help us love them more. Today's design feature: the "section page browse." An aspiring developer could develop a Tinder-like screen-swipe that allows a reader to quickly peak at the page number, next pages, back page *and* quantifiable page count of that section, like a diagonal outliner expand/collapse operation. Let's call this user action the "section page browse." What it is - analog: A reader when reading a section of a newspaper can wet the tip of a finger, and at the upper right, corner-fold-peak one page forward in that section's pages without losing his or her place. What it could be - digital: A click-hold-drag operation from the upper right in a diagonal-left motion can expose for the reader a peak at the upper-right corner of the next page(s) in that section. The further the click is dragged to the lower left, the greater the...

We love the internet. Many of us love newspapers. For digital newspaper consumers, better user interface could help us love them more. Today's design feature: the "section browse." An aspiring developer could develop a Tinder-like screen-swipe that allows a reader to quickly peak at the tops of that day's newspaper sections like an outliner expand/collapse operation. Let's call this user action the "section browse." What it is - analog: That ingenious timeslice known as "today's paper" is nicely compartmentalized into "sections." Our regional paper the San Francisco Chronicle usually publishes A News B Bay Area C Sports D Business E Datebook. The sports *section* is published on green newsprint. The datebook on Sunday is published on pink newsprint. What it could be - digital: A click-hold-drag motion by the reader could stretch an expandable accordian display of that day's sections, a click-release could leave the disp...

Progress! Humans rule. 1. The storytelling kindle - read it for a while, let it talk for a while. Best-selling authors Danielle Trussoni and Walter Kirn in their Writerly podcast describe the new digital book-audio book hybrid coming soon from Amazon. A human can read the book on kindle, then shift and allow the book's author to read aloud the next few pages. Kirn is recording one such book now for Amazon. Writerly podcast: " Your Work in Audio: Understanding the New World of Audiobooks " 2. Minecraft's "Litcraft" project to engage reluctant readers - classics such as Robert Luis Stephenson's "Treasure Island" are being implemented in video game form. Guardian article: " How Minecraft is helping kids fall in love with books " 3. Handwriting encouragement tech - typing too much begets humans who lose the ability and need to write. But studies show writing longhand helps us process and remember information. This new notebook allows...

(Disclosure: This writer quit Facebook in stages, unfriending the final batch on Feb 14, 2018.) Time and again the large very profitable company known as Facebook (which owns Instagram and WhatsApp) nudges a public conversation into absurd territories. Imagine the platform that you log onto to connect with friends is profiting off of every ad impression that results from pages that cause you pain by saying Sandy Hook, where your child was murdered, was a hoax. A story reported this week by NBCNews, says one parent has tried to contact Facebook for years, yet the company claims it cannot engage users or find a long-term solution because it has too many users worldwide (and the company spent an extra $1 million on Washington, D.C. lobbying this year compared to last year, so the megacorporation just cannot afford to engage the little people that make its site obscenely profitable) : When asked if the company algorithmically flagged content with “hoax” or “crisis actor” alongside names of...

Saturday July 21 2018 Driver for Uber and Lyft live-streamed passengers without their consent.    theverge.com "Furthermore, humans are being told to adapt to the idea that our faces are going to identify us, in addition to the other adapting to automation we’ve been doing for decades. "    motherboard.vice.com Personal data such as what size pants you just bought are being vacuumed up by health insurance companies and used to set prices.    propublica.com Friday July 20 2018 Earhart was a product of her time and likely didn't see an option to bypass marriage. In her prenup she nearly declares a one-year timeline for divorce. Amelia Earhart’s highly unsentimental prenuptial letter to fiance George Putnam, 1931: pic.twitter.com/paqZEBE6pw — Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 2, 2018 "Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another." ...

At the bottom of this post is a "Privacy Taxonomy" created by Daniel Solove, a law professor. He defined these terms in his widely cited paper " 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy " published July 2007. Readers wanting to skip past the introduction can jump to the guts of the four-part framework from here: I. Information Collection Surveillance , Interrogation II. Information Processing Aggregation , Identification, Insecurity, Secondary Use III. Information Dissemination Breach of Confidentiality , Disclosure, Exposure, Increased Accessibility, Blackmail , Appropriation, Distortion IV. Invasion Intrusion, Decisional Interference --- "Why do you need privacy? Do you have something to hide? " "I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either." "If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life." "Show me yours, an...

A "general audience" ad, a "prestige" ad... Doc Searls, while in Europe, discovered Washington Post offers subscribers either: a) targeted ads, or b) no ads at all. Either online publishers have already forgotten how to fill those ad slots - or they're playing hardball in the face of GDPR. Searls makes a plea: Step one to breaking out of our silos is giving these non-targeted ads a name. Synonyms for "general": general   1   accepted, broad, common, extensive, popular, prevailing, prevalent, public, universal, widespread   2   accustomed, conventional, customary, everyday, habitual, normal, ordinary, regular, typical, usual   3   approximate, ill-defined, imprecise, inaccurate, indefinite, inexact, loose, undetailed, unspecific, vague   4   across-the-board, all-inclusive, blanket, broad, catholic, collective, comprehensive, ency...

Wednesday July 11, 2018 "We also found widespread suspicion: 72% of Americans reject the idea that 'what companies know about me from my behavior online cannot hurt me.' When we combined the people who are resigned with those who believe what firms know can hurt them, we found that 41% of Americans are not only resigned, they hold a dark concern that the basic dynamics of the emerging marketplace will cause them injury—and that they cannot control it."    asc.upenn.edu April 2014: A Privacy Call-to-Action for the Data Industry    adage.com "Despite how far technological advances have come in the way of customer service, 61% of consumers say human interaction, not digital, keeps them loyal."    fierceretail.com "Even if the effect on sales is not always as trackable as in direct-response campaigns, radio is still often an influential touchpoint in brand advertising campaigns."    thedrum.com "But how effective was thi...

Thursday July 5, 2018 A reasoning fallacy in all privacy conversations. Bottom of the stairs clinic candidate: also i've seen people saying "well the couple was ok with being outed by the media and the thread itself so??" which good for them but i want to live in a society where we operate on the assumption that strangers don't want their private conversations turned into viral content — Chelsea Fagan (@Chelsea_Fagan) July 5, 2018 Transunion failed to keep this person's data secure so he purchased their security locking service, then paid Transunion $5 to temporarily lift the service so his credit application could proceed.    avc.com "And, even if its applications are brought up to date, the Fourth Amendment is good only against the government. Restricting a corporation’s use of personal data requires a legislative act, and Congress is a barely functioning body."    newyorker.com Facebook accidentally flags Declaration of I...