Following is a list of things BruinTechs should know and share with others:
1. The 2022-2023 BruinTech Executive Board nomination deadline is today
This is a rewarding opportunity to strengthen your leadership skills, network across the university, and shape the future of BruinTech event programming.
Nominate yourself or a peer.
2. Privacy-preserving camera captures only the objects you want
Over the past decade, digital cameras have become ubiquitous in modern life — embedded in smartphones, smart eyewear, security surveillance systems, autonomous vehicles and facial recognition technologies. And as the sheer amount of image data being captured has grown, so have concerns about privacy protection.
But what if there was a way to take pictures that instantly capture only the objects of relevance in a frame while simultaneously blotting out unnecessary or potentially sensitive details, without the need for any editing, encryption or other digital post-processing work?
3. Scanning students' rooms during remote tests is unconstitutional, judge rules
The remote-proctored exam that colleges began using widely during the pandemic saw a first big legal test of its own — one that concluded in a ruling applauded by digital privacy advocates.
A federal judge this week sided with a student at Cleveland State University in Ohio, who alleged that a room scan taken before his online test as a proctoring measure was unconstitutional.
4. Life’s a Glitch: The non-apocalypse of Y2K obscures the lessons it has for the present
As families watched from home, Dick Clark stood on the steps of the town hall hosting the final New Year’s Rocking Eve of the millennium. The excited crowd chanted the countdown as the year entered its last 10 seconds, but when the ball dropped, the cries of “Happy New Year!” became shouts of “Happy New Wha!?!?” as the year switched from 1999… to 1900. Within seconds, screams filled the crowd as traffic lights exploded, drivers lost control of their cars, rotating restaurants spun out of control, planes fell from the sky, and household appliances went on the attack. And all because the Y2K compliance officer at a small town’s nuclear power plant had not gotten the job done, thereby triggering a calamitous domino effect causing anything and everything containing a computer chip to go haywire. Wandering through the chaos and looting that had overtaken the town’s streets, a girl walking with her family commented, “Well look at the wonders of the computer age now.” Her father, the offending compliance officer, replied, “Wonders Lisa, or blunders?” She retorted, “I think that was implied by what I said.”
5. Podcast: Should we delete our period tracking apps?
Since Roe v Wade was overturned in the US in June, there are concerns that law enforcement could request the intimate data users share with period tracking apps.
“We shouldn’t have to worry about the apps that we’re downloading when we are using our phones,” says Eva Blum-Dumontet, a technology policy expert who has researched the way period tracker apps handle data. “We should have the confidence that they are not going to turn against us and collect data that could land us in jail.”
