Zooming in on Big Tech’s Deceptive Privacy Practices and Why We Should All Be Paying More Attention

By now, you’re more than likely familiar with the first prompt—it’s the text that appears when you first open Zoom, and by enabling this function you can join a meeting using your computer’s microphone. Zoom is the video conferencing app that has recently surged in popularity due to the coronavirus pandemic. Zoom allows users to work or learn remotely, all from a safe social distance in the relative privacy of their own homes. While the company responsible for the app, Zoom Video Communications, hasn’t given concrete numbers regarding the size of its userbase, Zoom’s mobile platform was so popular towards the end of March that it was second only to TikTok as the most downloaded app globally. And yet, despite this ubiquity, you are probably not familiar with the second prompt. Of course, that’s because it wasn’t a prompt at all. Recent reporting revealed that Zoom was silently sending personal information to Facebook’s servers each time the Zoom app was accessed, and it was doing so without first seeking user approval. Details delivered to Facebook included when the user opened the app, their location, their phone carrier and model, as well as an advertising identifier uniquely generated by the user’s device that helps companies to target the user with personalized advertisements. Moreover, even if users had read the company’s privacy policy (which a majority of people do not), they would not have been aware that Zoom was disclosing this information because Zoom’s privacy policy did not even detail this practice! This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on April 19, 2020. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

Does Early Screening Predict Special Education Placement by Age Five?

The Early Screening Inventory-Revised is an early childhood assessment used to screen three and four-year-olds entering preschool. This screener assesses basic skills and one’s level of functioning as he or she begins to learn in an academic environment. The purpose of this screener is to alert the school district about students who may struggle academically in a school- based setting. Based on the results of the assessment, students can receive academic or behavioral support from the school if the teacher and parents of the child deem the support necessary. Students who receive support from the school may or may not be evaluated following the academic or behavioral supports conducted in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to determine if the Early Screening Inventory- Revised predicts special education placement by the age of five. The participants included three -year-old students in the preschool setting. Based on the results of the Early Screening Inventory-Revised, it was concluded that students who were identified early and received intervention were still placed in special education; this is in comparison with their peers who were recommended for intervention but refused it. Many individuals who refused intervention were not placed in special education. It was speculated that many teachers and parents refused intervention because they wanted the students to grow and develop independently, without support. Those students who were labeled early were on the “radar”, compared with their peers who refused intervention

Channel-Fill Sandstones in the Middle Pennsylvanian Rocks of Indiana

Indiana Geological Survey Report of Investigation 23Data from coal-test boreholes and outcrops show that channel-fill sandstones occur at 32 localities in western Indiana in the Brazil, Staunton, Linton, Petersburg, and Dugger Formations of middle Pennsylvanian age. These sandstones average 40 feet thick, 3 miles long, and a quarter of a mile wide at the top and commonly trend southwestward down the regional dip. At least nine different coal beds are cutout or replaced locally by these channel-fill sandstones. Four classes of channel-fill sandstones are recognized in Indiana. Channel-fill sandstones of class 1 form a dendritic pattern and trend and thicken downdip; those of class 2 also form a dendritic pattern and trend downdip without thickening; channel sandstones of class 3 do not form a dendritic pattern but also trend downdip; and those of class 4 do not trend downdip; instead, they are parallel to the regional strike, and they do not have a dendritic pattern. The channel-fill sandstones are light brown or red brown, thick bedded and crossbedded, medium grained to coarse grained, and micaceous. Their bases rest disconformably on underlying strata, and they represent the lowest stratigraphic unit in a cyclothem. Paleotopography, influenced by differential compaction of sandstone and shale, underlying structure, and a southwesterly regional slope determined the geographic distribution and orientation of the channel-fill sandstones. The periodic lowering of sea level during middle Pennsylvanian time probably exposed the Cincinnati Arch and thus permitted consequent subaerial streams to erode the channels and fill them mostly with sand on at least six different occasions. Possibly most of the channel-fill sandstones were derived from the Pottsville (lower and middle? Pennsylvanian) and the Chester rocks that were presumably on the arch. The Coxville Sandstone, first referred to by G. H. Ashley in 1899, is herein proposed as a member at or near the base of the Linton Formation of the Allegheny Series (middle Pennsylvanian) in Indiana. The Palzo Sandstone of Illinois probably is correlative with the Coxville Sandstone Member. The main objectives of this report are (1) to show the geographic and stratigraphic distribution of some of the channel-fill sandstones in the Allegheny Series (middle Pennsylvanian) in Indiana, (2) to show how these sandstones can be recognized by means of a working geometric classification, and (3) to discuss their tectonic relations, genesis, and economic significance. Except for some field descriptions, the petrography of the channel sandstones was not studied. The author collected data on channel sandstones from outcrops and coal-test boreholes while he worked on coal resources studies in parts of Parke, Vermillion, and Vigo Counties from 1953 to 1958 inclusive. Other geologists of the Coal Section provided data from Clay, Knox, Daviess, Pike, Spencer, and Warrick Counties. Although channel-fill sandstones occur in the other coal-bearing counties in Indiana, they have not been studied and thus are not included in this report.Indiana Department of Conservatio

Efficient Decoupling of Multiphysics Systems for Uncertainty Propagation

Uncertainty propagation through coupled multiphysics systems is often intractable due to computational expense. In this work, we present a novel methodology to enable uncertainty analysis of expensive coupled systems. The approach consists of offline discipline level analyses followed by an online synthesis that results in accurate approximations of full coupled system level uncertainty analyses. Coupling is handled by an efficient procedure for approximating the map from system inputs to fixed point sets that makes use of state of the art L1-minimization techniques and cut high dimensional model representations. The methodology is demonstrated on an analytic numerical example and a fire detection satellite system where it is shown to perform well as compared to brute force Monte Carlo simulation

Strongly Refuting Random CSPs Below the Spectral Threshold

Random constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are known to exhibit threshold phenomena: given a uniformly random instance of a CSP with $n$ variables and $m$ clauses, there is a value of $m = \Omega(n)$ beyond which the CSP will be unsatisfiable with high probability. Strong refutation is the problem of certifying that no variable assignment satisfies more than a constant fraction of clauses; this is the natural algorithmic problem in the unsatisfiable regime (when $m/n = \omega(1)$). Intuitively, strong refutation should become easier as the clause density $m/n$ grows, because the contradictions introduced by the random clauses become more locally apparent. For CSPs such as $k$-SAT and $k$-XOR, there is a long-standing gap between the clause density at which efficient strong refutation algorithms are known, $m/n \ge \widetilde O(n^{k/2-1})$, and the clause density at which instances become unsatisfiable with high probability, $m/n = \omega (1)$. In this paper, we give spectral and sum-of-squares algorithms for strongly refuting random $k$-XOR instances with clause density $m/n \ge \widetilde O(n^{(k/2-1)(1-\delta)})$ in time $\exp(\widetilde O(n^{\delta}))$ or in $\widetilde O(n^{\delta})$ rounds of the sum-of-squares hierarchy, for any $\delta \in [0,1)$ and any integer $k \ge 3$. Our algorithms provide a smooth transition between the clause density at which polynomial-time algorithms are known at $\delta = 0$, and brute-force refutation at the satisfiability threshold when $\delta = 1$. We also leverage our $k$-XOR results to obtain strong refutation algorithms for SAT (or any other Boolean CSP) at similar clause densities. Our algorithms match the known sum-of-squares lower bounds due to Grigoriev and Schonebeck, up to logarithmic factors. Additionally, we extend our techniques to give new results for certifying upper bounds on the injective tensor norm of random tensors

Bridging the social and the biomedical: engaging the social and political sciences in HIV research

This supplement to the Journal of the International AIDS Society focuses on the engagement of the social and political sciences within HIV research and, in particular, maintaining a productive relationship between social and biomedical perspectives on HIV. It responds to a number of concerns raised primarily by social scientists, but also recognized as important by biomedical and public health researchers. These concerns include how best to understand the impact of medical technologies (such as HIV treatments, HIV testing, viral load testing, male circumcision, microbicides, and pre-and post-exposure prophylaxis) on sexual cultures, drug practices, relationships and social networks in different cultural, economic and political contexts. The supplement is also concerned with how we might examine the relationship between HIV prevention and treatment, understand the social and political mobilization required to tackle HIV, and sustain the range of disciplinary approaches needed to inform and guide responses to the global pandemic. The six articles included in the supplement demonstrate the value of fostering high quality social and political research to inform, guide and challenge our collaborative responses to HIV/AIDS

The Spin-Statistics Connection in Quantum Gravity

It is well-known that is spite of sharing some properties with conventional particles, topological geons in general violate the spin-statistics theorem. On the other hand, it is generally believed that in quantum gravity theories allowing for topology change, using pair creation and annihilation of geons, one should be able to recover this theorem. In this paper, we take an alternative route, and use an algebraic formalism developed in previous work. We give a description of topological geons where an algebra of "observables" is identified and quantized. Different irreducible representations of this algebra correspond to different kinds of geons, and are labeled by a non-abelian "charge" and "magnetic flux". We then find that the usual spin-statistics theorem is indeed violated, but a new spin-statistics relation arises, when we assume that the fluxes are superselected. This assumption can be proved if all observables are local, as is generally the case in physical theories. Finally, we also show how our approach fits into conventional formulations of quantum gravity.Comment: LaTeX file, 31 pages, 5 figure