SUMMARY: Plattsburgh, New York, doesn't look like ground zero for a gold rush. But cryptocurrency prospectors have installed thousands of energy-gobbling mining machines while taking advantage of dirt-cheap electric rates. And the invasion has some locals up in arms, while offering opportunity for others. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on the impacts of Bitcoin mining.
A computer program rated defendants' risk of committing a future crime. These are the results.
Courtrooms across the nation are using computer programs to predict who will be a future criminal. The programs help inform decisions on everything from bail to sentencing. They are meant to make the criminal justice system fairer — and to weed out human biases.
ProPublica tested one such program and found that it's often wrong — and biased against blacks. (Read our story)
We looked at the risk scores the program spit out for more than 7,000 people arrested in Broward County, Florida in 2013 and 2014. We checked to see how many defendants were charged with new crimes over the next two years — the same benchmark used by the creators of the algorithm. Our analysis showed:
- The formula was particularly likely to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals, wrongly labeling them this way at almost twice the rate as white defendants.
What does that look like in real life? Here are five comparisons of defendants — one black and one white — who were charged with similar offenses but got very different scores.
- White defendants were mislabeled as low risk more often than black defendants.
Two Shoplifting Arrests
James Rivelli, 53.
In August 2014, Rivelli allegedly shoplifted seven boxes of Crest Whitestrips from a CVS. An employee called the police. When the cops found Rivelli and pulled him over, they found the Whitestrips as well as heroin and drug paraphernalia in his car. He was charged with two felony counts and four misdemeanors for grand theft, drug possession, and driving with a suspended license and expired tags.
Past offenses: He had been charged with felony aggravated assault for domestic violence in 1996, felony grand theft also in 1996, and a misdemeanor theft in 1998. He also says that he was incarcerated in Massachusetts for felony drug trafficking.
COMPAS score: 3 — low
Subsequent offense: In April 2015, he was charged with two felony counts of grand theft in the 3rd degree for shoplifting about $1,000 worth of tools from a Home Depot.
He says: Rivelli says his crimes were fueled by drug use and he is now sober. “I'm surprised [my risk score] is so low,” Rivelli said in an interview in his mother's apartment in April. “I spent five years in state prison in Massachusetts.”
Robert Cannon, 18.
In December 2013, Cannon was caught shoplifting a cell phone and two pairs of headphones from a Wal-Mart (together valued at $171.52), and was charged with misdemeanor petty theft.
Past offense: One earlier misdemeanor petty theft in Miami in 2012.
COMPAS score: 6 — medium
Subsequent offenses: None.
He says: We were unable to contact Cannon. We visited his last known address and was told by the residents that they did not know him and that they could not pass on a message to him.
Two Drug Possession Arrests
Dylan Fugett, 20.
In February 2013, Fugett was charged with a felony for cocaine possession, and two misdemeanors for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Past offense: In 2010, he was charged with a felony for an attempted burglary.
COMPAS score: 3 — low
Subsequent offenses: Fugett was caught with marijuana and drug paraphernalia twice more in 2013. Then, during a traffic stop in 2015, when he was arrested on a bench warrant, he admitted that he was hiding eight baggies of marijuana in his boxers. He was charged with marijuana possession with intent to sell.
He says: Fugett says his low risk score seems like an accurate assessment. “Everybody sees me as a thug because I used to have earrings and tattoos,” Fugett said in an interview at his mother's house in April. “But I really am just a big old teddy bear.”
Bernard Parker, 21.
During a January 2013 traffic stop for expired registration tags, cops found an ounce of marijuana in Parker's car. He was charged with felony drug possession with intent to sell.
Past offense: In 2011, he was arrested for running from the cops and tossing away a baggie that was suspected to contain cocaine.
COMPAS score: 10 — high
Subsequent offenses: None.
He says: “I haven't been in trouble with the law,” Parker said when interviewed at his grandmother's house in April. “I try to stay out of their way.”
Two Burglary Arrests
Anthony Vitiello, 30.
In April 2014, a cop spotted Vitiello breaking open an air conditioner unit behind someone's house to steal copper tubing out of it. When confronted, he admitted he had stolen parts from the same unit before and was coming back for more. He was charged with felony possession of burglary tools and misdemeanor prowling/loitering.
Past offenses: A felony charge for check-forgery and a juvenile misdemeanor.
COMPAS score: 2 — low
Subsequent offenses: Three subsequent felony burglaries, all within the next year. In one burglary, he threw a brick through a person's kitchen window and climbed in, but the person came home while he was there, and he ran away. He then broke into another person's house, where he was finally caught. In another burglary, he broke into someone's house and stole jewelry, a camcorder, three Kindles, a camera, and car keys. Most recently, he broke someone's bedroom window, climbed in and stole $500 in cash.
He says: We were unable to make contact with Vitiello. We visited his last known address and left letters for him there but did not get any response.
Hassheim White, 18.
In January 2014, a cop stopped White and a friend on the street. White was carrying a pair of car-stereo speakers, some flashlights, a tire gauge, and some coins. He confessed that he and his friend had stolen them from cars they had broken into. White was charged with two felony counts of burglary, misdemeanor petty theft and misdemeanor prowling/loitering.
Past offenses: Two juvenile felonies.
COMPAS score: 8 — high
Subsequent offenses: None.
He says: “I'm done with that lifestyle,” White said in an interview at his home in April. “It used to be home to home, couch to couch, theft to theft. Now it's shift to shift, paycheck to paycheck. I've got a child on the way.”
Two DUI Arrests
Gregory Lugo, 36.
In October 2014, Lugo crashed his Lincoln Navigator into a Toyota Camry. When a police officer arrived at the scene of the accident, Lugo fell over several times and an almost-empty bottle of gin was found in his car. He was charged with DUI and with driving with a suspended license.
Past offenses: Three previous DUIs (in 1998, 2007, and 2012), and a misdemeanor battery in 2008.
COMPAS score: 1 — low
Subsequent offense: Two days later, Lugo was charged with two counts of misdemeanor battery for domestic violence.
He says: Lugo says he is now sober and a low risk. “You take the alcohol away, and I am not a violent person,” Lugo said in an interview at his home in April.
Mallory Williams, 29.
In October 2013, Williams hit a parked car in a parking lot. She was charged with six misdemeanor counts of DUI, leaving the scene of an accident, and resisting arrest without force.
Past offenses: Two misdemeanors in Virginia in 1984 and 2006.
COMPAS score: 6 — medium
Subsequent offenses: None.
She says: We were unable to make contact with Williams. She did not respond to attempts to reach her through her last known phone numbers and email addresses.
Two Petty Theft Arrests
Vernon Prater, 41.
In the summer of 2013, he shoplifted $86.35 worth of tools from a Home Depot in North Lauderdale, and was charged with felony petty theft.
Past offenses: Prater served a five-year prison sentence in Florida for an armed robbery and another attempted robbery in 1998. He was also arrested for another armed robbery in South Carolina in 2006.
COMPAS score: 3 — low
Subsequent offenses: Prater went on to break into a warehouse and steal $7,700 worth of electronics, tools and appliances. He was charged with 30 felony counts, including burglary, grand theft in the third degree, and dealing in stolen property when he pawned the stolen goods. He confessed to the owner of the warehouse that he had taken the items because he had a drug problem and promised to pay him back later. Prater received an eight-year sentence for the thefts and is now in Florida state prison.
He says: We were unable to make contact with Prater through his court-appointed attorneys.
Brisha Borden, 18.
In 2014, Borden and a friend picked up a blue Huffy bicycle and a Razor scooter that were sitting unlocked outside an apartment building, and started to ride them down the street. When the owner saw them and confronted them, Borden and her friend dropped the bike and scooter and ran away. A neighbor called the cops, and the two girls were charged with misdemeanor petty theft and burglary.
Past offense: Four juvenile misdemeanors.
COMPAS score: 8 — high
Subsequent offenses: None
She says: Borden did not respond to requests for an interview through friends, relatives, and letters left in person at her last known address.
SUMMARY: One of the greatest threats to private cybersecurity today is ransomware -- a cyberattack that blocks access to a computer until the hacker is paid a ransom. The problem recently took on new urgency when a hospital in Los Angeles had its entire network shut down for hours, putting hundreds at risk; another high-profile breach hit L.A.’s health department last week. William Brangham reports.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): But, first, a look at what’s become the latest threat to our cyber-security.
The problem took on new urgency recently when a hospital in Los Angeles had its entire computer network, including all its digital medical records, locked up by hackers. They demanded a ransom before they’d release the computers. It was the second such attack this month. L.A.’s Health Department was hit last week.
These types of computer attacks, which usually target individual computer users, are on the rise.
The “NewsHour's” William Brangham reported on this threat last year, and now he brings us an update.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Inna Simone is retired. She’s a mother and grandmother from Russia who now lives outside of Boston. In the fall of 2014, her home computer started acting strangely.
INNA SIMONE, Retiree: My computer was working terribly. It was not working. I mean, it was so slow.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: A few days later, while searching through her computer files, Inna saw dozens of these messages — they were all the same. They read: “Your files are encrypted. To get the key to decrypt them, you have to pay $500.”
Her exact deadline, December 2 at 12:48 p.m., was just a few days away.
All her files were locked , tax returns, financial papers, letters, even the precious photos of her granddaughter Zoe. Inna couldn’t open any of them.
INNA SIMONE: It says, “If you won’t pay, your fine will double. If you won’t pay by then, all your files will be deleted and you will lose them forever and never will get back.”
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Inna Simone, like thousands of others, had been victimized by what’s known as a ransomware attack. Hackers — who law enforcement believe come mainly from Eastern Europe or Russia — manage to implant malicious software onto your computer, usually when you mistakenly open an infected e-mail attachment, or visit a compromised Web site.
That software then allows the hackers to lock up your files, or your entire computer, until you pay them a ransom to give it back.
Justin Cappos is a computer security expert at New York University.
JUSTIN CAPPOS, New York University: It will actually lock you out of the files, the data on your computer.
So, you’d be able to use the computer but those files have been encrypted by the attacker with a key that only they possess. It’s frustrating because you know the data is there. You know the files are there. You know your photos and everything is there and could be accessible to you. But you have no way of being able to get at it because of this encryption that the attackers are using.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is exactly what happened at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles. According to officials, about a month ago, their computerized medical records were locked up by one of these malicious programs, and a hacker demanded $17,000 in ransom to unlock them.
During this time, medical staff were forced to use paper and pen for their record-keeping, but they say no patient files were compromised. The hospital decided to pay the ransom. Their computers were unlocked, and the FBI is now investigating.
An artificial intelligence program developed by researchers at Google can beat a human at the board game GO, which some consider to be the most complicated board game in existence. And this AI program — dubbed AlphaGo — didn’t defeat any ol’ human, but the European Go champion Fan Hui in a tournament last October by five games to nil. The findings, published today in the journal Nature, represent a major coup for machine learning algorithms.
“In a nutshell, by publishing this work as peer-reviewed research, we at Nature want to stimulate the debate about transparency in artificial intelligence,” senior editor Tanguy Chouard said at a press briefing yesterday. “And this paper seems like the best occasion for this, as it goes- should I say, right at the heart of the mystery of what intelligence is.”
Known as wéiqí in Chinese and baduk in Korean, GO originated in China over 2,500 years ago. The board consist of a 19 by 19 grid of intersecting lines. Two players take turns placing black and white marbles on individual intersection points. Once place, the stones can’t be moved, but they can be captured by completely surrounding an opponent’s marble. The ultimate objective is control more than 50 percent of the board, but since the board is so intricate, there are numerous possibilities for moves.
“So Go is probably the most complex game ever devised by man. It has 10^170 (that's 10 followed by 170 zeros) possible board configurations, which is more than the numbers of atoms in the universe,” said study author and AlphaGo co-developer Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind.
SUMMARY: Ever since (traitor) Edward Snowden released information about the extent of secret U.S. surveillance, a battle has been growing between tech companies and the government over access to data. New reports suggest the Obama administration may be backing down on its demands over encryption. William Brangham speaks to David Sanger of The New York Times.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Ever since (traitor) Edward Snowden released a mountain of information about the extent of U.S. government secret surveillance, the battle has been growing between tech companies and the government over access to data.
One of the major fronts in that battle has been the decision by Apple, Google, Microsoft and others to lock down, or encrypt, data on smartphones and digital devices.
But new reports say the Obama administration may be backing down from its demands.
William Brangham has the story.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): For months now, the Obama administration has said it’s essential to be able to occasionally access messages, texts and photos that are sent on today’s smartphones. But many of the latest devices give individual users the power to control their data and block others from seeing it.
Until recently, law enforcement has argued that this encryption is making it increasingly hard to track terrorists or criminals who are using these devices to communicate with each other.
For example, this is what Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told a Senate hearing this summer:
SALLY YATES, Deputy Attorney General: ISIL currently communicates on Twitter, sending communications to thousands of would-be followers right here in our country. When someone responds and the conversations begin, they are then directed to encrypted platforms for further communication.
And even with a court order, we can’t see those communications. This is a serious threat, and our inability to access these communications with valid court orders is a real national security problem.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This past week the Obama administration has apparently backed off on some of its demands to gaining access to our digital devices.
David Sanger has been reporting on this for The New York Times. And he joins me now.
David Sanger, welcome.
DAVID SANGER, The New York Times: Thanks. Good to be with you, William.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The term of art here is encryption. And for those who haven’t been following this debate very closely, could you just give us a quick primer? What is encryption?
DAVID SANGER: Well, encryption is a sophisticated version of what you did when you made codes when you were a kid.
It is taking the data that’s in your phone and wrapping it in a code so that if somebody got ahold of that phone, if they didn’t know the key, they couldn’t de-encrypt it. And sometimes conversations are encrypted or data is encrypted when it’s moving across a telephone wire as well.
Soli, Google's new gesture technology, would allow users to interact with their devices without ever touching the device itself. Here's how it's poised to make an impact.
It seems like pop culture is obsessed with the idea of interacting with technology without actually touching a device to do so. Movies such as Minority Report and Iron Man are the frontrunners in this -- the idea that the future of technology will be decidedly "hands-off."
That future could be coming sooner than we think. Last week, at its annual I/O developer conference, Google announced Soli, a project that would allow users to interact with their devices using hand gestures performed near the device, without requiring contact with the device.
"Project Soli is the technical underpinning of human interactions with wearables, mobile devices as well as the Internet of Things," a Google ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) spokesperson said.
Soli was born out of Google's ATAP group. It's a fingernail-sized chip that uses radar to read hand gestures and convert them to actions on the device.
So if a user was to touch his or her thumb to their forefinger, Soli would read that as a button being pressed. Or, the user slides his or her forefinger back and forth on the pad of their thumb, that could operate a slider to adjust volume.
Unlike cameras, which are used in other motion sensing technologies, radar has a high positional accuracy, and thus works better in this context than cameras would. It's able to pick up on slight movements better.
"Radar is a technology which transmits a radio wave towards a target, and then the receiver of the radar intercepts the reflected energy from that target," lead research engineer Jaime Lien said in a video about Soli. (below)
The radar waves bounce off of your hand and back to the receiver, allowing it to interpret changes in the shape or movement of your hand. Radar is also important to the project, according to Soli team lead Ivan Poupyrev, because it can work through materials or be embedded into objects.
The technology is vaguely reminiscent of the theremin musical instrument developed in the 1920s by Léon Theremin, but much more intricate. In the Soli video, Poupyrev mentioned that the technology could be used interact with "wearables, Internet of Things, and other computing devices."
The potential for Soli in wearables is perhaps the most obvious use case so far. Small screens make it difficult to select certain apps or features, and being able to perform gestures next to the device might make navigation easier and intuitive.
According to 451 analyst Ryan Martin, it is important that a company like Google gets involved in this space because a project like Soli is important to the wearable and IoT ecosystems as a whole and it's important that it "be approached from a technology perspective, not a product perspective."
There are companies that focus solely on gesture-based interactions, but that can be risky and volatile as it will likely just be integrated as a feature. Martin said that wrist-based wearables are actually less efficient if users actually have to touch them, and Soli could be a step forward in making them more efficient and usable.
Other potential use cases could be within connected cars or in the augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) spaces. Imagine your Oculus Rift or Gear VR could support virtualized "hands" as another input without a third-party accessory. Although, Martin said, it would probably work better as a complement to another input such as voice or touch.
Using Soli as an input tool is the glaring use case for now, but the project could provide value as an output technology as well.
"I think the killer application, or use case, long-term is going to be how to take this technology and have it be scanning around to provide context and enable automation that might not even necessitate gesture-based interaction, it might just happen," Martin said.
Gillette is one of many companies whose factories utilize high-speed cameras to analyze manufacturing processes and equipment to better understand when maintenance or repair is needed. Soli could provide a similar service to advanced manufacturing facilities by consistently reading the machines and documenting their performance.
Time to market will depend on user experience. As a device feature, Soli needs to be reliable and consistent or it will be detrimental to the partner brand or OEM that integrates it.
"Once the technology is able to meet that end, I think that's when we'll start to see it baked into products, but right now it's definitely in its development phase," Martin said.
According to the Google ATAP spokesperson, the company will be releasing a hardware and software development kit to developers soon. If you want more information about Project Soli, you can contact the team at projectsoli@google.com.
SUMMARY: Every day, we depend on artificial intelligence to help us make sense of a steady deluge of information. AI helps the post office to sort its mail, Wall Street to make financial decisions and physicians to diagnose patients. Hari Sreenivasan reports on how tech firms are investing in the next generation of intelligent computer programs and in what ways the technology still lags behind humans.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Now we continue our series about artificial intelligence, A.I., where computers are able to make intelligent decisions without human input.
As computing power gets stronger and people continue to generate massive amounts of data, A.I. is making its way into the marketplace and into your doctor’s examination room.
Hari Sreenivasan has the latest in series on breakthroughs in invention and innovation.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Advances in artificial intelligence continue to push the boundaries between science fiction and reality, like this brain-controlled device at the University of Minnesota. It enables users to fly a model helicopter with only their thoughts. The hope is it will soon help disabled people to operate robotic arms.
But you don’t need to be in a university lab to find A.I. It’s all around us.
MAN (voice on iPhone): What’s the fifth planet from the sun?
HARI SREENIVASAN: Helping us search for information.
WOMAN (voice on iPhone): Jupiter is the fifth planet orbiting the sun.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Our smartphones use A.I. to navigate us, choosing the least congested traffic routes. Even the U.S. Postal Service uses it to sort mail. And on Wall Street, autonomous machines help make major financial decisions.
RAY KURZWEIL, Inventor/Futurist: At least 90 percent of the financial transactions are guided in one way or another by artificial intelligence.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Ray Kurzweil directs Google’s engineering lab, but spoke to us in his capacity as an independent inventor. He’s convinced that A.I. programs are already on track to solve many of the problems vexing mankind today.
RAY KURZWEIL: They’re helping us find a cure for disease, helping us diagnose disease, analyzing environmental data to help us clean up the environment. Virtually every industrial process is a combination already of human and machine intelligence.
SUMMARY: Ransomware, a type of software that computer hackers use to hold individuals' data hostage by blocking access to files unless they agree to pay a ransom, is on the rise. And because anyone with an internet connection is vulnerable, the problem highlights a growing threat that consumers face on both their personal computers and mobile devices.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Inna Simone is retired, a mother and grandmother from Russia who now lives outside of Boston. Last November, her home computer started acting strangely.
INNA SIMONE: My computer was working terribly. It was not working, I mean, it was so slow.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: A few days later, while searching through her computer files, Inna saw dozens of these messages — they were all the same. They read: “Your files are encrypted. To get the key to decrypt them, you have to pay $500 dollars.” Her exact deadline — December 2nd at 12:48 pm – was just a few days away.
All her files were locked — tax returns, financial papers, letters — even the precious photos of her granddaughter Zoe. Inna couldn’t open any of them.
INNA SIMONE: It says, “If you won’t pay, within one week or whatever, your fine will double. If you won’t pay by then, all your files will be deleted and you will lose them forever and never will get back."
SUMMARY: Tom Clarke of Independent Television News reports on how an artificial intelligence business owned by Google has created software that can teaching itself to play classic Atari games better than a human.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Next, Playing video games might seem like child’s play.
But, as Tom Clarke of Independent Television News reports, it’s also at the frontier of artificial intelligence.
TOM CLARKE, Independent Television News: It was the late 1970s, and for the first generation of video gamers, Atari was king. By the standards of the day, the graphics were mind-blowing, the sound out of this world.
And the selection of games just went on and on and on.
Ah.
Compared to the video games of today, Atari looks pretty clunky, but the games are still quite difficult to play, especially if you haven’t picked one up for 30 years, like me. But it’s that exact combination of simple graphics, but quite challenging game play, that has attracted the cutting edge of artificial intelligence researchers back to the 1970s.
This version of “Space Invaders” isn’t being played by a person, but a system of computer algorithms that is learning how to play it just by looking at the pixels on the screen. It may not sound like it, but it’s something of a breakthrough, the work of one of the finest young minds in A.I. research, North Londoner Demis Hassabis.
The PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan speaks to co-authors Chase Cunningham and Heather Dahl about their new comic book, “The Cynja”.
Fictional character Grant Wiley, 11, is a wiz on computers. One day, his favorite teacher disappears, leaving nothing at his desk but a smoldering USB stick. Suspecting his help might be needed, Grant grabs the stick and plugs it into his computer at home.
He’s instantly sucked into the Internet and thus begins his adventures as a newly trained “cynja” fighting computer worms, hackers, malware … and worse.
Authored by Chase Cunningham and Heather Dahl, who both work for cybersecurity consulting firms, “The Cynja: Volume 1” aims to introduce children to the world of cybersecurity and teach them how to protect their computers.
Dahl said in an interview with the PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan that she was motivated to take on the project when she tried to find a book to teach her young nephew about “the bad guys who live in our computers.” But “I couldn’t find anything that showed the world I work in,” so she approached Cunningham to help fill the void.
Cunningham said his goal was to create a relatable character that could explain to children what people are doing to protect their cyber-future. “I’ve worked in this industry for a long time and a lot of the guys that are out there doing what they can to protect the Internet and keep us safe, they don’t have badges and they’re not policemen or firemen or something like that.”
His hope is readers will better understand the role of these protectors and think, “You’re a cynja, you’re a cyberspace ninja — that’s cool.”
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): You may have heard headlines today about a major lapse in Internet security and the possibility that millions of passwords, credit card numbers, bank information, and commonly used Web sites could have been exposed.
It involves a bug or security leak called Heartbleed, which can be used to read encrypted information.
Hari Sreenivasan gets a breakdown on what you need to know.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Essentially, Heartbleed can be used to read the memory of computer servers, the places behind a Web site that store your information, including the lock and key system which protects your usernames and passwords.
You probably see this encryption in the form of a green lock when you conduct a transaction and exchange information. The breach was revealed this week, but apparently has existed for a long time.
Russell Brandom of The Verge, an online site covering tech news, is here to help explain.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Often, when we discuss the financial markets, we show these pictures, shots of traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but the trading world changed several years ago.
Much of it now is done with computer servers, hundreds of millions of orders done through what is known as high-frequency trading. This week, there is a lot of buzz about a provocative new book focusing on how it has changed and how one-thousandth-of-a-second can make a big difference.
The book is titled “Flash Boys.” The author the Michael Lewis, who also wrote “Moneyball,” “Liar’s Poker,” and “The Big Short.”
And Michael Lewis joins us now. Welcome back to the NewsHour.
MICHAEL LEWIS, Author, “Flash Boys”: Thanks for having me, yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, you focus much of the story on this New York financial trader who starts out thinking the markets are all about one thing, discovers that there’s something wrong, and basically goes about trying to change everything.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Why did you focus on him?
MICHAEL LEWIS: Because I was working on something else and I needed to learn what high-frequency trading was. This is a term of art that really didn’t even exist until three or four years ago.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Like other fabled tech Cinderella stories, this one started as a young man with an idea working out of a garage.
Yesterday, Facebook announced it would pay $2 billion for Oculus VR, a company that makes a virtual reality headset for video games.
NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman recently featured the company in a pair of reports about virtual reality. We start with this excerpt.
MAN: This is insane.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): Though not yet ready for retail — it’s expected to sell for about $300 — the Oculus Rift is already being hailed as the Holy Grail of gaming, a lightweight, affordable headset to deliver totally immersive virtual reality, or V.R.
NATE MITCHELL, Oculus VR: A lot of us got into the games industry to build virtual worlds and explore — build and explore neat places. And being able to step inside those places for the first time is incredibly exciting.
SUMMARY: The Commerce Department recently announced it would give up oversight of ICANN, the California nonprofit that manages the unique domains of the world's websites and email servers. There's been international pressure to make the change, especially in light of revelations about NSA surveillance. Vint Cerf of Google and Randolph May of the Free State Foundation join Judy Woodruff to offer debate.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Who controls the World Wide Web, and how is it overseen and governed? These are the questions that most of us don’t really know the answers to, but the Obama administration announced a change in the role played by the United States, one that’s stirring up concerns about the Internet’s future and freedom from censorship.
FADI CHEHADE, CEO, ICANN: To become the world’s ICANN, we have to go to the world.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Change was in the wind as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, kicked off a meeting in Singapore this weekend, its purpose, to start crafting a transition from U.S. control of administration of the Internet.
Since 1998, the California nonprofit has had a federal contract to manage the unique identifiers of the world’s Web sites and e-mail servers, regulating domain names such as dot-com and dot-gov.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The World Wide Web turns 25 years old today. The date marks the publication of a paper that originally laid out the concept, which eventually led to the vast system of Internet sites we now use.
Jeffrey Brown looks at how it’s changed the world we live in.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): One way to do that is to look at how individual Americans think about the Internet and its impact on their lives.
The Pew Research Internet Project did that in a survey just out. Among much else, it finds that 87 percent of American adults now use the Internet, and the number goes up to 97 percent for young adults from 18 to 29. Ninety percent of Internet users say the Internet has been a good thing for them personally, though the number drops to 76 percent when asked if the Internet has been a good thing for society generally, with 15 percent saying it’s been bad for society.
And 53 percent of Internet users say the Internet would be, at minimum, very hard to give up.
We’re joined by three people who’ve watched the growth of the Internet from different angles. Xeni Jardin is a journalist and editor at the Web blog Boing Boing, which covers technology and culture. Catherine Steiner-Adair is a clinical and consulting psychologist at Harvard Medical School, and author of “The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.” And Daniel Weitzner teaches computer science and Internet public policy in at MIT. From 2011 to 2012, he was U.S. deputy chief technology officer in the White House.
And welcome to all of you.
And, Daniel Weitzner, I will start with you, because you worked with Tim Berners-Lee, who — one of the main people that started all this 25 years ago. What has — what surprises you now, sitting here 25 years later, about where we’re at?
DANIEL WEITZNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Well, it does surprise me how tremendously the Internet and the Web has grown into every aspect of our lives.
I think that a lot of us who were involved in the early days of the Internet and the Web had hoped that it could really reach the whole world. And there’s no question that Tim Berners-Lee, who — whose architecture for the World Wide Web really helped it to grow, had the ambition that it in fact cover the whole world — represent everything in the world. But I think it’s amazing how far we have actually come in that direction.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Last week, President Obama announced a new initiative to help level the playing field for young men of color.
In Oakland California, one program is already under way.
Aarti Shahani of KQED in San Francisco reports.
OK, it didn’t say after the third element.
ARTIE SHAHANI, KQED: These teenagers spend hours glued to their computer screens. But they’re not playing games or doing their homework, for that matter. They’re studying something they’re not taught at school: computer coding.
They’re picking up Python, and HTML5, and Ruby on Rails.
Johnnel White is a sophomore at Vallejo High.
JOHNNEL WHITE: It’s a new language. It’s like you learn — like you’re learning Spanish, but you’re learning something else other than Spanish, letters and numbers and symbols.
AARTI SHAHANI: This is the Hidden Genius Project, a small nonprofit that’s working to recruit young black men into the high-tech sector. It’s one of the few parts of the economy that’s booming and aching for diversity.
The boys have to apply to the program. And, if accepted, they commit to classes twice a week in Oakland.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): All week this week, we have been stepping into the future with stories about robots in the opera and the coming revolution in 3-D printing.
Now Paul Solman gets in on the act with a look at the economics of this latest machine age. It’s part of his ongoing coverage Making Sense of financial news.
PAUL SOLMAN: Sorry to see you do that.
A robot that plays Connect Four. First one to get four in a row wins. My grandkids thrash me at 10 times this speed, but after decades, as promised, robots like Baxter here are finally replacing humans at a breakneck pace.
Really?
Or so say MIT Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee.
ANDREW MCAFEE, Co-author, “The Second Machine Age”: Where we have always needed human beings, suddenly, we have digital alternatives to all of them that are already pretty good and getting better very, very quickly.
ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON, Co-author, “The Second Machine Age”: Andy and I have been astonished at how rapidly things are happening, whether it’s self-driving cars, computers that can place “Jeopardy” and beat the best champion. We are seeing a wave of technologies that can automate all sorts of cognitive tasks.
PAUL SOLMAN: In their new book, “The Second Machine Age,” Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue that industry is facing a revolution as radical as the one powered by the steam engine.
ANDREW MCAFEE: The Industrial Revolution was about overcoming the limitations of our individual muscles. What is going on right now in the second machine age is overcoming the limitations of our individual minds.
In the course of writing my book, Dragnet Nation, I tried various strategies to protect my privacy. In this series of blog posts, I try to distill the lessons from my privacy experiments into a series of useful tips for readers.
Data brokers have been around forever, selling mailing lists to companies that send junk mail. But in today’s data-saturated economy, data brokers know more information than ever about us, with sometimes disturbing results.
Earlier this month, OfficeMax sent a letter to a grieving father addressed to “daughter killed in car crash.” And in December, privacy expert Pam Dixon testified in Congress that she had found data brokers selling lists with titles such as “Rape Sufferers” and “Erectile Dysfunction sufferers.” And retailers are increasingly using this type of data to make from decisions about what credit card to offer people or how much to charge individuals for a stapler.
During my book research, I sought to obtain the data that brokers held about me. At first, I was excited to be reminded of the address of my dorm room and my old phone numbers. But thrill quickly wore off as the reports rolled in. I was equally irked by the reports that were wrong — data brokers who thought I was a single mother with no education — as I was by the ones that were correct — is it necessary for someone to track that I recently bought underwear online? So I decided to opt out from the commercial data brokers.
It wasn’t easy. There is no law requiring data brokers to offer opt-outs. Of the 212 data brokers that I managed to identify, less than half — 92 — accepted opt-outs. Of those, a majority — 65 — required me to submit some form of identification, such as a driver’s license to opt out. Twenty-four sites required the opt-out forms to be sent by mail or fax. In some cases, I decided not to opt-out because the service seemed so sketchy that I didn’t want to send in any additional information.
Still, I achieve some minor successes: A search for my name on some of the largest people-search websites, such as Intelius and Spokeo, yields no relevant results.
So, for those who want to try my strategy, here are the two spreadsheets I put together with the names of companies that track your information, links to their privacy pages, and instructions on how to opt out, in the cases where they offered them.
The first spreadsheet below is a list of data brokers who will give you copies of your data (you can download your own copy). The second is the list of data brokers from whom I sought to opt-out, with the ones that allowed opt-outs highlighted (download this one here).
Good luck!
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): Another story that we wanted to follow up on tonight is the state of credit card security, or lack of it. This following discourse is about major security breaches at big retailers, including Target and Neiman Marcus. Now new details are emerging about who was behind it, and how it was accomplished. For more we are joined now, from Washington, by Mike Riley with Bloomberg News. So, there was a big report out - it started to layout the details. How do these hackers get all the credit card numbers?
MIKE RILEY, Bloomberg News: So, they have a pretty sophisticated piece of malware that goes on the point of sales system itself, so that is the terminal that sits in front the the cash register that we all swipe our cards on. So, the malware goes there and it takes advantage of a quirk, where within that machine, all that information that is taken off that card is sent from one memory chip to another. It is not encrypted in that process, and they grab it right there.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And so, who is writing this malware?
MIKE RILEY: It looks like it is Eastern European or Russian criminal gangs. Some of the most sophisticated hackers in the world are Russian or Eastern European. What they have done is they have gotten really good systems. It is like a supply chain that you can buy pieces of malware. If you are good enough, as in this case - they have bought a specific piece of malware, called Black POS. It is a pretty good piece of malware to begin with, but then they customized it. They made it better. They made it harder to find, and then they figured out a scheme to get into Target's computers, and stuck it on the point of sales system. It is also pretty clear that the same gang, or a group of different hackers using the same malware, are targeting other retailers. We have not seen the end of this.
