A system tracking student data to provide personalized learning has been scrapped “…after parents worried that its database technology was violating their children’s privacy.”

A Bill and Melinda Gates initiative, InBloom‘s goal in tracking the information was to, “give educators a better, more cost-effective way to track students’ individual learning needs”.

But despite claimed security, it was noted that InBloom WAS vulnerable to the ‘Heartbleed’ worm and isn’t privacy awareness by parents is a good thing?

Face recognition software has never been as accurate as humans. But a new algorithm claims upward of 98% pair-matching accuracy. Try the test at the link.

Claims aside, it’s true the software is getting better, and with Google, Facebook and TLAs like FBI, CIA, NSA, filling databases, they have pictures of all of us.

If this bothers you there is not much you can do about it short of going all Unibomber in a cabin in the woods. (Hint, don’t show your writing style to your relatives.)

I guess you could drop out of Facebook and delete your account, if Facebook allowed that. CVDazzle is a company that claims its fashions can defeat facial recognition algorithms. Don’t know about fooling the cameras but these looks would not seem at all out-of-place in most parts of Portland, Berkeley or Davis. Images courtesy CV Dazzle.

What I’m Reading: The Babylonians: An Introduction, by Gwendolyn Leick. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003, 182 pages softbound. Words I learned:
apotropaic; a type of magic intended to “turn away” harm or evil
prebend; the stipend assigned by a cathedral or collegiate church to a canon or member of the chapter
baldachin; a cloth canopy fixed or carried over an important person or a sacred object
medlar; Mespilus germanica, known as the medlar or common medlar, is a large shrub or small tree, and the name of the fruit of this tree
finical; Finicky, fastidious, overly precise or delicate.

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