Robert Karanja Contributor Share on Twitter Robert Karanja is a Director of Responsible Technology and Africa Lead for Omidyar Network and is based in Nairobi, Kenya. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many technological shifts – how many of us knew what Zoom was before last spring? Rapidly-developed mRNA COVID vaccines are themselves a case study […]
Fed To Ban Policymakers From Owning Individual Stocks
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Responding to a growing controversy over investing practices, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday a wide-ranging ban on officials owning individual stocks and bonds and limits on other activities as wel…
Biden’s QSBS tax plan would have unintended consequences for startups
Buried in Biden’s 2021 tax plan are new amendments to the U.S. Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) program, which, if passed, will impact early-stage startup employees, founders and investors.
WhatsApp now lets users encrypt their chat backups in the cloud
WhatsApp is beginning to roll out a new feature that will provide its two billion users the option to encrypt their chat history backup in iCloud or Google Drive, patching a major loophole that has been exploited by governments to obtain and review private communication between individuals. WhatsApp has long encrypted chats between users on […]
行政手続きに使われる「xID」がマイナンバー法違反の指摘。これを受け自治体でアプリ利用停止へ
自治体などの行政手続きで利用されているデジタルIDサービス「xID」に、法的な問題があるとして自治体の利用停止の動きが広がっているようだ(高木浩光@自宅の日記、読売新聞、なか2656のblog)。
xIDは本人がスマホアプリにマイナンバーを入力しxIDを生成する仕組み。このxIDのシステムに関して高木浩光氏がマイナンバー法2条8項にある「裏個人番号」に該当するのではないかと指摘している。同氏によれば「裏個人番号」は、法的にはマイナンバーと同等のものになるという。マイナンバーは桁数が少ないことから…
総務省、郵便局が顧客データを企業に販売できるよう法改正へ
あるAnonymous Coward 曰く、総務省は日本郵政が顧客のデータを企業に販売できるように法改正を目指しており、そのため個人情報保護ガイドラインを来年夏までに見直すことがわかった(産経新聞)。 日本郵政グループは郵便物の配達状況から全国各地の住所について居住実態・自動車の保有状況・店舗の開店閉店情報などを把握している。今後、その居住者情報を災害時に自治体に提供することで安否確認に利用したり、自動車保有状況をデータベース化して自動車販売ディーラーに販売し営業に利用してもらうなどの新規事業を想定…
The Sad Tale of a Silicon Valley-Funded, Libertarian ‘Startup City’
RestOfWorld.org tells the story of a libertarian ‘startup city’ in Honduras that was “supposed to be a privatized, Silicon Valley-funded paradise.”
Co-founded by 37-year-old Venezuelan Erick Brimen, “Próspera’s founders promised to enrich the…
It’s a big moment for climate change. Here are 4 books for autumn to understand what’s changing
We’re just weeks away from COP26, the big environmental policy confab where scores of world leaders will descend on Scotland and determine the future of the planet, answering the question, “Should we all die or live?” That’s meant a whole truckload of new books on the subject, as well as renewed attention to older works […]
Everything is accelerating in the exponential age
Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride. The pace of change over the last few decades is only set to accelerate in the coming years, as improvements in biology, medicine, spacecraft, manufacturing, software and more continue to transform the very foundations of society, economics and politics. We cover these innovations pretty much daily […]
How culturally deranged is our climate today?
Climate change has been the deepest, most challenging cognitive puzzle for humans to untangle these past years. It’s systems on top of systems, with emergent properties that can easily turn intuitive notions into catastrophic dead ends. Every action has a reaction or ten, and improving one part of the system almost invariably leads to weaknesses […]