over-the-place – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Full NHS hospital records uploaded to Google servers, "infinitely worse" story to come

To clarify, the @HSCIC story that’s coming is, I believe, infinitely worse than patient hospital records being uploaded to Google BigQuery — ben goldacre (@bengoldacre) March 3, 2014 PA Consulting, a management consulting firm, obtained the entire English and Welsh hospital episode statistics database and uploaded it to Google’s Bigquery service . The stats filled 27 DVDs and took “a couple of weeks” to transfer to Google’s service, which is hosted in non-EU data centres. This is spectacularly illegal. The NHS dataset includes each patient’s NHS number, post code, address, date of birth and gender, as well as all their inpatient, outpatient and emergency hospital records. Google’s Bigquery service allows for full data-set sharing with one click. The news of the breach comes after the collapse of a scheme under which the NHS would sell patient records to pharma companies, insurers and others (there was no easy way to opt out of the scheme, until members of the public created the independent Fax Your GP service ). According to researcher and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre, this story is just the beginning: there’s an “infinitely worse” story that is coming shortly. Sarah Wollaston, who is also a family doctor and Conservative backbencher, tweeted: “So HES [hospital episode statistics] data uploaded to ‘google’s immense army of servers’, who consented to that?” The patient information had been obtained by PA Consulting, which claimed to have secured the “entire start-to-finish HES dataset across all three areas of collection – inpatient, outpatient and A&E”. The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to upload. The management consultants said: “Within two weeks of starting to use the Google tools we were able to produce interactive maps directly from HES queries in seconds.” The revelations alarmed campaigners and privacy experts, who queried how Google maps could have been used unless some location data had been provided in the patient information files. NHS England patient data ‘uploaded to Google servers’, Tory MP says [Randeep Ramesh/The Guardian] ( via Charlie Stross )

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Full NHS hospital records uploaded to Google servers, "infinitely worse" story to come

Gorgeous Map of the Internet: XKCD meets National Geographic

Martin Vargic has produced a gorgeous mashup of XKCD’s Map of Online Communities and the classic National Geographic Maps, producing a work of art that is a wonder to behold. It’s for sale on Zazzle , as a $37, 34″x22″ poster. I was originally inspired by map of the internet created by xkcd, showing most popular social networks as countries and regions, back in 2010. It was not my original idea, but I extended it to such a scale for the first time. I used photoshop for the majority of drawing. The base style of the map was inspired by the National Geographic Maps, I also used Winkel Tripel Projection and similar border coloring fashion. I created the map in quite a short time, three weeks to be exact. I often worked early in the morning, and I can say I really enjoyed it. I got the data about website sizes mainly from Alexa and similar online services. Currently, I am working on the next versions of the map, which will be even more ridiculously detailed than the previous one, and will encompass all major websites without any significant exceptions, it will be coming in mid-february. The map is divided into 2 distinctive parts; the eastern continent, “the old world” showcases software companies, gaming companies and some of the more real-life oriented websites. Western part, “the new world” is composed from two major continent, northern one showcasing social networks, search websites, video websites, blogs, forums and art websites. All major adult-oriented websites, in addition to varioius warez and torrent sites, are located on the southwestern continent of the map. In the very south of the map, there is located “Great Southern Land” of obsolete websites and online services. Outside the main map, there are also 4 minimaps showing NSA monitoring by country, most used browser, most used social network, and internet penetration by country. Map of the Internet 1.0. ( via IO9 )

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Gorgeous Map of the Internet: XKCD meets National Geographic

All library audiobooks going to DRM-free MP3s

Ben writes, “Overdrive, which is one of the main suppliers of downloadable audiobooks to public libraries, announced that it is retiring its DRM-encrusted .WMA formats and pushing everything to DRM-free .mp3s .” This is a big deal. Audiobooks are the last holdouts for DRM in audio, and one company, Audible, controls the vast majority of the market and insists upon DRM in all of its catalog (even when authors and publishers object). Itunes, Audible’s major sales channel, also insists on DRM in audiobooks (even where Audible can be convinced to drop it). Audiobooks can cost a lot of money, and are very cumbersome to convert to free/open formats without using illegal circumvention tools. To stay on the right side of the law, you have to burn your audiobooks to many discs (sometimes dozens), then re-rip them, enduring breaks that come mid-word; or you have to play the audio out of your computer’s analog audio outputs and redigitize them, which can take days (literally) and results in sound-quality loss. Overdrive going DRM-free for libraries is a massive shift in this market, and marks a turning point in the relationship between the publishers/creators and the technology companies that act as conduits and retail channels for their work. It’s especially great that libraries are getting a break, as they have been royally screwed on electronic books and audiobooks up until now. This is in response to user preferences, widespread compatibility of MP3 across all listening devices and the fact that the vast majority of our extensive audiobook collection is already in MP3 format. This includes the audiobook collections from Hachette, Penguin Group, Random House (Books on Tape and Listening Library), HarperCollins, AudioGo, Blackstone, Tantor Media and dozens of others. Our publisher relations team is working closely with the very few remaining publishers who require WMA to seek permission to sell their titles in MP3 for library and school lending. We will soon be communicating the discontinuance of WMA sales, and then at a future date, we will announce when MP3 files will be the only supported format through OverDrive platforms. For libraries and schools that currently have WMA audiobook files in their collection, we will be working with the publishers of those titles to gain permissions to update your inventory to MP3. In the event that some titles are unavailable, an alternate solution will be offered to make up for the lost titles. Be on the lookout for announcements on our blog and from your Collection Development Specialist for a timeline of this process. OverDrive announces plan for audiobooks to be solely available in MP3 format [Heather Tunstall/Overdrive] ( Thanks, Ben! ) ( Image: DRM PNG 900 2 , a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from listentomyvoice’s photostream )

Wearable planters: 3D printed translucent jewelry, with plants!

Etsy seller Wearableplanter has a wide range of 3D printed planters: rings, jewelry — even bicycle vases! They’re intended for use with succulents, small flowers, and sprouts. They’re watertight and translucent, and you can see the roots through the material. A Wearable Planter ( via Wil Wheaton )

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Wearable planters: 3D printed translucent jewelry, with plants!

High-rez scan Poe’s "Raven," illustrated by Dore

The Library of Congress’s website hosts a high-resolution scan of a rare edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” illustrated by Gustave Doré. The title-page is at page 11 , the list of illustrations is on page 14 . The illustrations are amazing, like no other illustrated Poe I’ve seen. I’ve collected my favorites below, and there are a lot of them — honestly, it was impossible to choose. The Raven / by Edgar Allan Poe ; illustrated by Gustave Doré ; with comment by Edmund C. Stedman. ( via Reddit )

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High-rez scan Poe’s "Raven," illustrated by Dore

Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013

2013 was a banner year for the Pirate Bay, despite having been forced to change domain names half-a-dozen times. The site saw a 50% increase in uploads in 2013 , to 2.8 million links, presently being swarmed by nearly 19 million users. The Pirate Bay is reportedly developing a peer-to-peer browser that will be much harder to block using existing censorship techniques. Pirate Bay Uploads Surge 50% in a Year, Despite Anti-Piracy Efforts [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

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Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013

Sherlock and co are finally in the public domain

Patrick writes, “After more than 125 years and countless crappy incarnations on film, A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate.” The estate are notorious bullies, and have relied upon bizarre legal theories to extract funds from people who use the Sherlock canon characters in new works, even though those characters come from stories that are largely in the public domain. “They’ve heard about the way the estate is going around bullying people,” said Darlene Cypser, a lawyer in Denver and the author of a self-published trilogy about the young Holmes, for which the estate initially demanded a licensing fee. (She declined to pay, she said.) “This has been coming for some time. I’m glad Les decided to take it up.” Several other authors and publishers of Holmes-based work reported receiving somewhat friendlier versions of a threatening letter cited in Mr. Klinger’s complaint. In the letter Mr. Lellenberg suggested that the estate regularly worked with “Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and similar retailers” to “weed out unlicensed uses of Sherlock Holmes,” and would not hesitate to do so with Mr. Klinger’s volume as well. Mr. Klinger did pay a fee for a similar collection in 2011 at the insistence of his earlier publisher, but this time said he is calling the estate’s bluff. “It’s the ultimate case of the emperor having no clothes,” said Jonathan Kirsch, a publishing lawyer who represents him. “Everyone is making the decision to pay for permission they don’t need to avoid the costs and risks of litigation.” Suit Says Sherlock Belongs to the Ages [Jennifer Schuessler/NYT] ( Thanks, Patrick ! ) ( Image: A Study in Scarlet (Beeton’s Christmas Annual) , a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from 43021516@N06’s photostream )

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Sherlock and co are finally in the public domain

Utility companies go to war against solar

Utility companies across America are fighting solar , imposing high fees on homeowners who install their own solar panels to feed back into the grid. This one was predictable from a long, long way out — energy companies being that special horror-burrito made from a core of hot, chewy greed wrapped in a fluffy blanket of regulatory protection, fixed in their belief that they have the right to profit from all power used, whether or not their supply it. Bruce Sterling once proposed that Americans should be encouraged to drive much larger trucks, big enough to house monster fuel-cells that are kept supplied with hydrogen by decentralized windmill and solar installations — when they are receiving more power than is immediately needed, they use the surplus to electrolyze water and store the hydrogen in any handy nearby monster-trucks’ cells. When the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, you just plug your house into your enormous American-Dream-mobile — no need for a two-way grid. This solution wasn’t just great because it aligned the core American value of driving really large cars with environmental protection, but also because it was less vulnerable to sabotage from hydrocarbon-addicted energy companies. HECO, despite criticism from Hawaii’s solar industry, denies the moratorium is anything more than an honest effort to address the technical challenges of integrating the solar flooding onto its grid. The slowdown comes in a state where 9 percent of the utility’s residential customers on Oahu are already generating most of their power from the sun and where connections have doubled yearly since 2008. In California, where solar already powers the equivalent of 626,000 homes, utilities continue to aggressively push for grid fees that would add about $120 a year to rooftop users’ bills and, solar advocates say, slow down solar adoptions. Similar skirmishes have broken out in as many as a dozen of the 43 states that have adopted net-metering policies as part of their push to promote renewable energy. In Colorado, Xcel Energy Inc. has proposed cutting the payments it makes for excess power generated by customers by about half, because it says higher payouts result in an unfair subsidy to solar users. Utilities Feeling Rooftop Solar Heat Start Fighting Back [Mark Chediak, Christopher Martin and Ken Wells/Bloomberg] ( via /. ) ( Image: Solar Panels All Done! , a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from clownfish’s photostream )

Android gives you the ability to deny your sensitive data to apps

Android privacy just got a lot better. The 4.3 version of Google’s mobile operating system now has hooks that allow you to override the permissions requested by the apps you install. So if you download a flashlight app that wants to harvest your location and phone ID , you can install it, and then use an app like AppOps Launcher to tell Android to withhold the information. Peter Ecklersley, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has written up a good explanation of how this works , and he attributes the decision to competitive pressure from Ios, which allows users to deny location data to apps, even if they “require” it during the installation process. I think that’s right, but not the whole story: Android has also always labored under competitive pressure from its free/open forks, like Cyanogenmod. In the days when Android didn’t allow tethering (as a sop to the mobile carriers, who are the gatekeepers to new phones for many people), Cyanogenmod signed up large numbers of users, simply by adding this functionality . Google added tethering to Android within a couple of versions. Some versions of Cyanogenmod have had the option tell your phone to lie to apps about its identity, location, and other sensitive information — a way to get around the “all or nothing” installation process whereby your the apps you install non-negotiably demand your “permission” to plunder this information. I’m not surprised to see the same feature moving into the main branch of Android. This dynamic is fascinating to me: Google has to balance all kinds of priorities in rolling out features and “anti-features” (no tethering, non-negotiable permissions) in Android, in order to please customers, carriers and developers. Free/open forks like Cyanogenmod really only need to please themselves and their users, and don’t have to worry so much about these other pressures (though now that Cyanogenmod is a commercial operation , they’ll probably need to start playing nice with carriers). But because Android competes with Cyanogenmod and the other open versions, Google can’t afford to ignore the featureset that makes them better than the official version. It’s a unique, and extremely beneficial outflow of the hybrid free/commercial Android ecosystem. In the early days, that model was at an improvement on its major competitor, Apple’s iOS, which didn’t even have a permissions model. But after various privacy scandals, Apple started forcing apps to ask for permission to collect data: first location and then other categories, like address books and photos. So for the past two years, the iPhone’s app privacy options have been miles ahead of Android’s. This changed with the release of Android 4.3, which added awesome new OS features to enhance privacy protection. You can unlock this functionality by installing a tool like App Ops Launcher. When you run it, you can easily control most of the privacy-threatening permissions your apps have tried to obtain. Want to install Shazam without having it track your location? Easy. Want to install SideCar without letting it read your address book? Done.2 Despite being overdue and not quite complete, App Ops Launcher is a huge advance in Android privacy. Its availability means Android 4.3+ a necessity for anyone who wants to use the OS while limiting how intrusive those apps can be. The Android team at Google deserves praise for giving users more control of the data that others can snatch from their pockets. Awesome Privacy Tools in Android 4.3+

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Android gives you the ability to deny your sensitive data to apps

Aluminum castings of ant-nests

Anthill Art fills ant colonies with molten aluminum, creating massive, intricate castings of the architecture of the ants’ nests. They’re for sale on Ebay (surprisingly cheap, too), and they’re spectacular. I make casts of ant colonies using molten aluminum to fill the tunnels and chambers of the nest. The result is an amazing sculpture showing the intricate detail of the nest architecture. The cast is then mounted for display on a wood base. Each display has a stainless steel plaque mounted on it with information on the cast and a unique cast number. These make perfect displays for a home or as an educational piece for teachers and professors to display in a science classroom or laboratory. Anthill Art – Artistic and Educational Ant Colony Castings ( Thanks, Fipi Lele! )

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Aluminum castings of ant-nests