Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 20, 2019

remlaps-lite (76)in #rsslog • 5 years ago

State media in China takes out Twitter ads against Hong Kong protestors; A framework for defense against disinformation campaigns; Flaws in study finding links between red meat and cancer; The history of the traffic light; Citizen science: Can you name that caterpillar?


Straight from my RSS feed	Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

pixabay license: source.

China’s state media is paying Twitter to promote ads against Hong Kong protesters - Xinhua, China's state run news agency, has used Twitter to run at least one ad saying that the protests are becoming increasingly violent and that there is widespread support for efforts to restore order. Twitter has suspended one of their ads, saying that it violated the platform's policy on "inappropriate content".

Influence Operations Kill Chain - Speaking of possible influence operations... Bruce Schneier revises his framework to describe the steps involved in an influence operation (propaganda campaign) by a foreign adversary. Using this framework, he also proposes countermeasures against each of the 8 steps. He refers to this defensive model as a "kill chain".

No.	Disinformation Step	Countermeasure
1	Exploit "cracks in the fabric of society"	Shore up the institutions that society depends upon. "The public must learn to become reflexively suspicious of information that makes them angry at fellow citizens."
2	Build audiences	Social media companies detect and deter propagandists
3	Sew confusion with competing narratives	Improve digital literacy
4	Base lies upon "kernels of truth"	Increased media skepticism and find ways to debunk "fake news" that don't have a side-effect of spreading it.
5	Conceal your hand	(i) Attribution; (ii) Algorithm transparency from social media companies
6	Cultivate "useful idiots" to amplify the message	(i) Make the truth louder than the disinformation; (ii) Focus on persuading the persuadable.
7	Deny involvement	Public attribution must be accompanied by convincing evidece
8	Play the long game	Counter-attacks, persistent engagement, targeted sanctions and criminal indictments

An important part of Schneier's conclusion is this: "Defending democracy against foreign influence also necessitates making our own political debate healthier."

More Bad Nutrition Studies: Red Meat and Cancer - A recent journal article claimed to find an association between red meat and breast cancer, claiming that women can reduce their risk of breast cancer by more than 25% by switching from red meat to chicken. This youtube video explains some problems with the study: (i) it focused on women with a family history of breast cancer, so genetic susceptibility probably swamped other factors; (ii) All data were collected from just a single "food frequency questionnaire"; (iii) The absolute risk reduction (0.01%) is more important than the relative risk reduction (>25%). The absolute risk reduction indicates that at best (ignoring the other problems), 1 in 10,000 people will benefit from this dietary change; (iv)The study confuses correlation and causation; and (v) there may have been no approval from an ethics board nor informed consent from participants (his remarks on that point seem ambiguous, so I'm not sure about that). h/t RealClear Science

The Rise of the Traffic Light - There are multiple people contending for the title of "inventor of the traffic light". This podcast discusses the various claims, and looks at moments in technology history that led to the widespread usage of the traffic light. Of course, to invent the traffic light, the car had to be invented first, so that's where the podcast starts. It is interesting to learn that because of slow speeds and traffic jams in the era before traffic lights, the press actually debated whether or not cars represented a technological advance over the horse and buggy. As to the invention of the traffic light, itself, one claimant was John Peake Knight a British railroad enthusiast who thought to apply train signals for automobiles (which were, in turn, adapted from maritime signals). Another claimant is Lester Wire, a Salt Lake City police officer. A final claimant is Cleveland's James Hoge, who had his design patented. By the 1930s, traffic lights were becoming commonplace, and of course later inventors added automatic timers and the yellow light as a warning that a red-light is coming. Interesting factoid, it is speculated that a public school teacher in Cleveland may have invented the game "Red-light / Green-light" to teach kids the new rules of the road. Like the traffic light itself, however, there are multiple claimants to the title of "inventor of 'Red-light' / 'Green-light''.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - One of the things that I really like about Steem is its underappreciated capability to fuel things like citizen science. So, here's a caterpillar photo from @justineh. Just for fun, what can we learn about this caterpillar? What kind of caterpillar is it (scientific name)? What does it eat? How long does it live?, Are there any other relevant and interesting facts about it? (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @justineh.)

In order to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments and/or your own response post.