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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Young People News

16 December 2013

What happens when a company that knows everything about everyone, controls robots designed for the miliary?

'Google have apparently been buying up lots of robotics firms lately – eight in the last six months – with a view to some unspecified future robotics projects, under the command of the guy who ran the Android phone bit of the company for a while.

What is particularly interesting, though, is that Boston Dynamics has multi-million-dollar contracts with the US military's advanced research division, Darpa, for the production of human-like and other robots.'

Read the article here

19 November 2013

'Recently we’ve seen the rise of a new wave of startups that give far more control back to users. They have avoided the public nature of Twitter and the – sometimes toxic – vagueness of Facebook which has happily moved from a private network to one where, frankly, you’re never quite sure what is public or not.'

 

Read the full article here.

31 October 2013

And so it begins... California-based Glass Explorer Cecilia Adabie is the first person to get a ticket while wearing Google's head-mounted computer. And she won't be the last.

Abadie was driving in San Diego when an officer pulled her over for speeding. The primary infraction was for going 15 mph over the speed limit, but there was a secondary offense scrawled on the ticket: "driving w/ monitor visible to driver (Google Glass)."

 

Read the full story here.

17 October 2013

Facebook announced today that teenage users can now make their posts public on Facebook. Previously, the social network limited users between the ages of 13 and 17 to distributing posts to their extended network—i.e. friends and friends of friends. Teenage users also now have the option to turn on the "follow" setting for their accounts, letting public updates appear in news feeds.

In an apparent attempt to mitigate the impact, Facebook has set the default sharing setting for new teen accounts at "friends only," compared to the previous default of "friends of friends."

 

Read more here.

30 September 2013

'Remember in "The Dark Knight" when Batman turns all the mobile phones in Gotham City into one super-surveillance network that can show him what the populace is up to at any given moment? That basically exists already, only it's no masked vigilante behind it. It's Foursquare.'

Read more here.

Remember in “The Dark Knight” when Batman turns all the mobile phones in Gotham City into one super-surveillance network that can show him what the populace is up to at any given moment? That basically exists already, only it’s no masked vigilante behind it. It’s Foursquare.
10 September 2013

'On the day of her birth, our daughter already had accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Github. And to this day, we've never posted any content.

All accounts are kept active but private. We also regularly scour the networks of our friends and family and remove any tags. Those who know us well understand and respect our "no posts about the kid" rule.

When we think she's mature enough (an important distinction from her being technically old enough), we'll hand her an envelope with her master password inside. She'll have the opportunity to start cashing in parts of her digital identity, and we'll ensure that she's making informed decisions about what's appropriate to reveal about herself, and to whom.' Read more.