Further reports published by independent institutions make it increasingly difficult to believe in the security of data on the network. However, awareness of certain threats allows you to protect yourself against them. You can read more on this topic in the latest weekly review by the Digitized editorial team.
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Successive reports published by independent institutions make it increasingly difficult to believe in the safety of data on the network. As a result of the analysis by PrivacyTutor, eight out of ten VPN service providers track the activity of their users with cookies - without their knowledge. Meanwhile, according to this year's IBM Security study, the average global cost of a data breach between March 2022 and March 2023 was $4.45 million. This is the highest result in the eighteen-year history of the IBM report.
And then there are social media. The essence of their operation is to collect as much data as possible about people using these platforms in order to increase their engagement in content and monetize behavior patterns. You can read about the dire social consequences of such a business model in the Digitized Editorial recommends section, where we have included a fragment of Max Fisher's new book titled In the Gears of Chaos. How social media reprogrammed our minds and our world.
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As reported by the ExplodingTopics portal, the world is growing by 328.77 million terabytes of data every day, which gives 120 zettabytes annually. The prefix "zetta" means a trillion bytes. One trillion is approximately the number of all grains of sand on Earth. All these data are stored and processed by companies, organizations and other entities that try to extract as much useful information from them as possible. However, the main challenge now is to organize the data and apply appropriate rules in managing them. This is what a data steward does.
– A data steward is a person who supports researchers in all matters related to data management and sharing. He is also responsible for implementing data usage and security policies within the framework of data management initiatives – explains Magdalena Szuflita-Żurawska, Leader of the Open Science Competence Center at the Gdańsk University of Technology.
You can read more about the work of data stewards in a new article by Konrad Budka.
There are many people who have achieved nothing special, and yet they are on everyone's lips. There is also a second group, probably larger, although it is difficult to estimate - those who are not known to the general public, but should be.
The name of Marta Karczewicz appeared in the media around 2019, when she was nominated for the prestigious European Inventor Award as one of the three finalists in the "Lifetime Achievement" category, for her work on video compression. Then we learned that we owe the ability to use Netflix, Teams or Zoom to the scientist born in Szczecin. Thanks to her achievements, we are able to send movies and data, as well as communicate via video calls with people in any location.
Everything that requires the transmission of a huge amount of data is associated with the work and discoveries of Marta Karczewicz. Billions of people use them every day. Billions, not millions. Impressive, isn't it?
Every September, the eyes of the entire technology industry are turned in one direction - the next Apple conference, where the Cupertino giant usually presents new versions of the iPhone and the iOS operating system. This year was no different. Below you will find the full broadcast of the event, which took place on September 12 at 19:00 Polish time.
VR technology is associated with video games, but it is penetrating more and more areas of life. VR supports therapeutic processes and makes education attractive even for school-bored youth. The list of applications of this technology seems to have no end and is constantly growing.
Let's look at the VCC Foundation, which has developed and implemented twenty qualifications sought in the Polish labor market. It enabled three industries (construction, gastronomy, and 3D printing) to conduct and reproduce the entire training process and analyze any errors in VR. In the not too distant future, technology may allow for remote exams and confirmation of acquired qualifications.
An example can also be InventionMed, a Polish company from the tech segment, which creates medical simulators for education in the field of clinical and aesthetic dermatology. One of them allows for the necessary actions in the treatment of skin problems, while another simulates clinical procedures, varied by cases of various complications. We must not forget about the startup Unicorn VR World, which has created a game supporting children with special educational needs. In virtual reality, a safe world can be created in which, under the supervision of a therapist, work is done on developing the child's cognitive, social or personal competences.
You can read more about other applications of VR technology in the material by Mateusz Czerwiński.
At Digitized, we strive to support not only reliable journalism, but also - readership. That's why we've created a separate series called Digitized Reading Room. As part of it, every other Sunday we will publish excerpts from noteworthy books related to business, technology, sociology, science and related fields.
The position opening our cycle is a book by American journalist Max Fisher titled In the gears of chaos. How social media reprogrammed our minds and our world. Fisher, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his insightful analysis of the impact of social media on the world, analyzes in it the increasingly active and extensive actions of political movements on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit or Twitter and describes how algorithms designed to maximize profit and time spent on the portal systematically promote extreme content that provokes moral outrage and builds communities on a sense of threat.
We publish an excerpt from the book by Max Fisher, an investigative reporter and columnist in the foreign department of the "New York Times", courtesy of Szczeliny Publishing House. The translation was prepared by Mateusz Borowski.
Among the most powerful business angels were the co-founders of PayPal, including Peter Thiel, an extreme conservative who did not value diversity and claimed that the best people to run start-ups are antisocial hackers "with interpersonal skills at the level of an Asperger's team". The founders of PayPal advocated extreme liberalism. They believed in social Darwinism, did not trust the government, and were convinced of the superior wisdom of business. Thiel took these views to the extreme when in 2009 he announced: "I do not believe that democracy goes hand in hand with freedom". The care of society should not be entrusted to the "mindless demos that manages so-called social democracy", he wrote, using a Greek term that means citizens. Freedom can only be guaranteed by "companies like Facebook", and that's provided they free themselves from "politics", i.e. from all regulations, public accountability and probably also the law.
Elon Musk in a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman argues that the merger with Microsoft was a betrayal of the company's mission in pursuit of profit.
According to the latest forecasts from ABI Research, the augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technology sector is on the verge of a revolution - by 2028, the number of AR/VR sets delivered is expected to increase more than fivefold, reaching 69 million units.
As the only company in the world, it is able to produce processors in the most advanced 3 nm technology. In addition, it owns the most expensive factory ever built, and its clients are Apple, NVIDIA and Intel. How did it happen that Taiwanese TSMC became one of the most important companies in the world?
While Spotify users are sharing their musical summaries of the year 2023, the company itself is experiencing a deepening crisis. What's happening at Spotify?
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