The privacy risks of Big Data

Kind of a follow up to the It’s not a question of if, but only of when post from a few weeks ago. A fascinating but also scary read how it is possible to identify individuals from theoretically anonymised data:

Riding with the Stars: Passenger Privacy in the NYC Taxicab Dataset

Similar to this there is a lot of information in an itemised bill. Or a record of all websites visited…

Breaking News

This just in:

Everything is fine

In case you were worried about anything, everything is back to normal and fine now:

Very worrying: Antibiotic resistance

While there’s a lot of talk about the threat of terrorism and the fear of becoming the victim of a terrorist attack I think there are many other things we should be much more worried about. Like this one: World on cusp of “post-antibiotic era” (BBC News)

A simple bug could mean death, something that could be treated fairly easily so far might soon be deadly. As far as I understand it not a question of if, but of when. Scary.

There’s a hole in the sky and the ground’s not cold and if the ground’s not cold, we’re all gonna burn

Interesting read on the BBC website why there are so few climate change songs. This one gets a mention as one of the exceptions:

Nothing but the truth…