Inside View

A Holistic View of Competition #privacy

Image from Alex Castro in The Verge.

IN A MAJOR case against Facebook, the US government is defining "harms" in a holistic way. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges harm occurs if a company buys another company specifically to hinder its ability to compete.

Facebook's dominance in the market has degraded privacy, eroded user experience, increased the number of fake accounts, and facilitated misinformation. Each of these side effects is harmful. The FTC seems to be arguing that all of these harms would not have occurred if Facebook had to compete with the services it now owns. One of those services is Octazen, an exceptionally capable data scraping service that I wrote about 10 years ago.

 

When Comments Encourage Focused Reaction #billshock

AFTER BEING CHARGED approximately €150 per day for mobile data usage, I dove into comments accompanying mainstream articles and I learned from friends who posted their views on a Facebook item I wrote. I do not intend to pay for data I did not authorise.

Christmas Bill Shock h/t @klillington

I READ Karlin Lillington's byline in The Irish Times and she has shared several relevant consumer items about the costs and hazards of technology. Her cautionary note about the prospects of encountering bill shock related to mobile phone usage hit home in late November 2020 for me.

First Touch Surface Book

WE HAVE A COMMUNAL Surface Book now. I used it for 35 minutes during the first five hours of its life in the house. The remainder of the time the laptop was detached from its screen and used by Mia (13) with its pen to draw with the excellent app Leonardo.

Powering our Samsung TV with our Huawei MiFi

WHILE WAITING FOR an eir technician to rewire our fibre broadband connection, we connected our Samsung TV via ethernet cable to our Huawei B353 wireless modem. It works!

We don't get services bundled via eir but we have all the smart apps served up by Samsung. That means uninterrupted service via Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple TV+. Plus we can easily cast from one of our phones to the Samsung screen, using 4G connectivity via the Huawei B535.

Our Personal Quest for Energy Independence @power_vault

MY PERSONAL QUEST for energy independence involves saving solar energy as the primary power source for our household. That means investing in a Power Vault to store the energy AND committing to shutting down for the day when the stored power reaches a critical level.

Our home burns 11.4 kwh during the summer and nearly double that amount during the winter months if we run a space heater in our uninsulated outdoor studio. We need to conserve more and perhaps start with better insulation. Ideas welcome.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches remotely during COVID-19 and reckons working from home in his log cabin síbín costs three euro per day for electricity.]

Six Things I Do When Teaching Remotely

I EXPECT TO CONTINUE teaching third level students in a hybrid fashion for the rest of my days. Looking at my current teaching methods, I realise I use six rather unique technologies while delivering course material to a mix of creative media, digital animation, and game art design students.

Listening to pandemic survivors #COVID19

I HAVE BOOKS on my shelves that teach me lessons from generations ago. One of those books is written by Thucydides who explains how the citizens of Athens survived a major pandemic in the fifth century. The story is wonderfully told during a two part Ideas Podcast from the CBC. (Subscribe to Ideas from the CBC.)

A Tense Election Night and I Time Traveled into 2002

I STARTED LISTENING to early exit polls from the 2020 US election and somehow transported myself back to 2002 when Ruth and I walked alongside the River Liffey. I can find only a few photos from November 2002 but it's easy to lose myself in the sound track of my life from those less stressful times.

Careful with that ax @EOLoughlin #DataAnalytics

Photo from DIT e-learning summer school

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SEVEN YEARS AGO, I marveled at the YouTube tutorials Eugene O'Loughlin was churning out. I listened as he shared his experiences with a packed room during DIT's e-learning Summer School in 2013. Eugene often recorded his lectures beforehand and posted them on YouTube. After every lecture period at the National College of Ireland, Eugene would return to his office to often discover 100 more people had viewed his material online than had listened to him in the lecture hall.

Last week, Eugene O'Loughlin finished packing up Room 3.21 in the National College of Ireland. And today he retired from teaching.