Web Science Blog
Reactions, opinions and debate around current issues by invited guest authors expressing their own opinions. Contact us to have your say.
Ai-Da Jubilee portrait fails Turing test
In a unexpected public demonstration of rare AI expertise by the art world, a recent review by the Guardian art critic opined that a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II by AI artist Ai-Da "fails to meet the Turing test" (sic) though we are unclear what version of the...
In conversation with: Jennifer Zhu Scott
In conversation this time is well-known finance and digital economy expert, Jennifer Zhu Scott. Jen recently joined the WST Board of Trustees and we are delighted to welcome her. Ian Brown sat down to find out a little more about Jennifer's (Jen’s) path to Web Science...
Early NFT investor embarrassed by no resale interest
The recent surge in NFT coverage in tyhe technology and financial press was typified by the story of an early NFT auction in which an investor paid $2.9m for an NFT linked to Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey's first ever Tweet on the platform. This, it was claimed, was an...
Whack-a-Mole at Cent NFT exchange and piracy on the OpenSea
The US-based NFT trading platform, Cent, which stunned an unsuspecting public by selling an NFT of Jack Dorsey's first ever tweet on Twitter for £2.1 million has recently suspended trading of (most) NFT assets because "people were selling tokens of content that did...
Government agencies are tapping a facial recognition company to prove you’re you – here’s why that raises concerns about privacy, accuracy and fairness
Beginning this summer, you might need to upload a selfie and a photo ID to a private company, ID.me, if you want to file your taxes online. Oscar Wong/Moment via Getty Images James Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is...
Free Speech – American Style
by Kieron O’Harakmoh@soton.ac.uk 25th Jan, 2021The dust is settling on the chaotic aftermath of the American election, and debate is opening up about free speech: in particular, was Twitter right to deny President Trump, as he then was, access, and was the tech world...
Robot vacuum cleaners can spy on private conversations
Asst Prof Jun Han (left) and doctoral student Mr Sriram Sami (right) from NUS Computing with a robot vacuum cleaner, a monitor showing recovered sound waves, and common household items made from materials that can reflect sound. When your robot vacuum cleaner does its...
Apple launches app privacy labelling
Apple rolls out new app "packaging" to highlight what apps do with data and howmthey handle user privacy. Click here to read the full article
“Data are” or “data is”? A pedant writes
by Kieron O’Hara It is one of the divisive questions of our times. Is the word ‘data’ singular or plural? Some say “this data is …”, “the data doesn’t tell us …”; others “these data are …”, “the data don’t tell us …”. The singular use, often heard in computer science...
Recent perspectives on VC
As video conferencing (VC) has become the new normal, businesses, government services and academia are starting to confront what it means if VC (Zoom, Skype, FaceTime et al) become the default method (and in some cases currenty the only method) to allow "live"...
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