How the Facebook Data Scandal involving Cambridge Analytica is a Storm in a Teacup

“This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again”

Excerpt from Facebook's full-page apology ad has appeared in many US and British Sunday newspapers

Facebook is hot water....or a storm in a teacup, depending on how you look at the situation.

Facebook has been apologizing for the leak of their consumer data via the Cambridge Analytica psychological profile quiz app back in 2014 as noted in the article “Facebook Ads Apologise For Cambridge Analytica Scandal”, Published Monday March 26, 2018, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Their full-page apology ad has appeared in many notable US and British Sunday newspapers including:

1.      The New York Times

2.      The Washington Post

3.      The Sunday Times

4.      The Sunday Telegraph in the United Kingdom

Apparently, the 270,000 Facebook users who did the quiz and were paid by the researcher to do the psychological profile quiz back in 2014, probably gave more information that they wanted.

The Cambridge Analytica psychological profile quiz app also went on to collect the data from some 50 to 86 million friends connected to those people. What seems to be creating the problem is that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm affiliated with President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, created psychological profiles that were used to:

1.      Influence how people vote

2.      Influence how people think about politics and society

US$6 million was paid by the during the 2016 election by President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign. However, now that he's in power, he has since denied any connection to the data collection practices of Cambridge Analytica, being as they are a contractor.

So why is there so much fuss about the collection of personal data by Cambridge Analytica?

Cambridge Analytica  and Facebook - How Facebook makes money from your Profile

It's good to note that the ads have allowed voters to stop collecting so much data from users smartphones when the login, quote: “We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected”.

This is nothing new really.

The Facebook app already has been known to take up a lot of space on most smartphones as note in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to stop Facebook and Messenger from draining your battery”.

The Facebook app causes the following problems in most smartphones:

1.      20% reduction in the battery life for Google Android

2.      15% reduction in the battery life for Apple iPhone

3.      500GB Internal Storage when installed (Facebook)

Despite this, users and advertises benefit! Facebook uses this access to your smartphones to collect a vast amount of information on your smartphone usage including:

1.      Email address

2.      Strength of your phone’s battery

3.      Type of smartphone you are using

4.      News Feed you read

5.      Types of Ads you enjoy clicking on

6.      Websites that you visit outside of Facebook

Most of the data collection is done by AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms as explained in my blog article entitled “How Facebook Ads is using AI to build their version of Google Adwords and Adsense”. 

To be clear, Facebook doesn't sell your data but access to your presence on their Social Network as pointed out by their Data Policy, which was recently updated in light of the scandal. This information is sold to Third Party advertisers and analytics companies such as Cambridge Analytica, in order to generate more targeted ad campaigns.

The result is more ads in your Facebook feed as well as when you visit and login to certain website that are tailored more to your Facebook profile. Facebook’s business is valuable because it has so much personal data about its users.

Hence, selling that data to advertisers would significantly decrease Facebook’s value, as that what makes them valuable to advertisers and analytics companies in the first place.

Facebook and Instagram – Security Settings allow you to control Facebook Ads

Facebook also taps into information shared on Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook as noted in the article “Most Americans don't know Instagram is owned by Facebook ― and that's no accident”, published  April 12, 2018, CBS News.

Instagram also taps into Facebook data, so anything you do on their Social Network influences what types of ads you see. To see exactly what information Facebook has about you, do the following:

1.      Visit Settings on Facebook

2.      Click on Download a copy of your Facebook data under the General Tab

This will give you all of the data Facebook has collected about you, from private messages to photos to your search history.

You can also control what ads Facebook can share with you as follows:

1.      Click on Settings 

2.      Click Ads 

3.      View Ad Preferences

This show the interests Facebook thinks you have and advertisers use to target you. They also show other information they might use to target you with, which you can remove if you don’t want Facebook using the information to target you with advertising.

Still, you can stop Facebook from tracking you altogether by following these simple hand instructions as noted in my blog article entitled “How to stop Facebook from tracking you on your smartphone and the Real World”.

Good to note, your Security settings allow anyone, even casual advertisers with the right software to scrape profile and collect data on as many people who have left their Facebook Profiles as searchable by Google.

Most Third-party apps such as Uber or Spotify are granted permission to tap into your personal data via Facebook's Graph, in order to produce a better experience more tailored to your personality.

To be fair, advertisers and analytics companies that used access to your Facebook metrics do not know that you clicked on their ads. Advertisers and analytics companies can see demographic details about who sees their ads e.g. the number of males or females in a particular part of Jamaica that clicked on an ad but not the names and addresses of those persons.

This is how Cambridge Analytica got access to so many users data via their psychological profile quiz app: bulk data with no names. So they merely created political campaigns to target certain people in certain part of the country with certain ads that were tailored to their likes and dislikes, making to easy to sway them to vote for Donald Trump.

So if they have that level of access to your phone, is it possible that they may also be spying on you.

Facebook is not spying on you – If you opt in, your Data is for sale

Facebook may be selling access to advertising products tailored to your profile, but they do not know you.

According to their Data Policy, Facebook does not collect your private messages, call history or off-Facebook text message data, even your microphone as noted in the article “This is how Facebook uses your data for ad targeting”, published Apr 11, 2018 by Kurt Wagner, Recode.

 They might monitor your private messages, call history or off-Facebook text message data to determine if they violate the company’s policies, but they do not sell that information to advertisers. However, if you did opt in to letting Facebook uses that data when you signed up for an app, they can use this as indication to go ahead to sell that data.

This was indeed the case with Cambridge Analytica psychological profile quiz app, as the persons who took the quiz back in 2014 may have unwittingly given the app full access to their phone in exchange to be paid for the data that was being collected on them.

In fact, many apps actually pay you via Paypal, Skrill, PerfectMoney or even Bitcoin just to do surveys and quizzes as explained in my MICO Wars Blog article entitled “How Jamaicans with 5″ smartphone can make money using Apps”. 

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica - Media will soon stop swirling this teacup storm

So to summarize, the main problem here is not that Facebook was selling its access to your customer data to Cambridge Analytica, but rather that it was being used by the Donald Trump Political campaign to influence people to vote in an election.

Cambridge Analytica has committed no wrong, as all the 270,000 Facebook users were paid, as is currently the case with most apps that pay you for your information.

Facebook need not worry, for as soon as the media stop swirling this teacup storm, it’ll be back to business as usual, as many, including these very same newspapers, benefit from their targeted advertising services.

How GOJ JA$30 million for UWI Research into Sea Sponges is better spent on Energy Solutions

“A special sponge has been found underwater at Port Royal by the university that is now being developed as an anti-cancer agent and it carries the name Port Royal. For me, that is just great”

Minister of sports, culture, entertainment and gender affairs, Olivia Grange, at the University of the West Indies, Mona, 19th staging of its Research Days opening ceremony on Wednesday February 7^th 2018

Who knew that sea sponges can possibly be a part of the fight against cancer?

Apparently that sea sponge, which has been found underwater in Port Royal is worth JA$30 million in research money as noted in the article “Research On Special Sea Sponge Could Hold Vital Anti-Cancer Properties”, published Friday February 9, 2018 by Paul Clark, The Jamaica Gleaner.

This allocation, which is a part of an agreement on research and development between Jamaica and South Africa in the areas of indigenous knowledge and water research, has been set aside for the next three (3) years to fund such ventures.

This was revealed by Minister of sports, culture, entertainment and gender affairs, Olivia Grange, at the University of the West Indies, Mona, 19th staging of its Research Days opening ceremony on Wednesday February 7^th 2018.

The sea sponge (Porifera) is basically a simplest multicellular living organisms that grow in all different shapes, sizes, colours, and textures. The name, which literally means “pore-bearing” refers to the countless tiny openings or holes visible on all sponges.

She also mentioned that the UWI, Mona, was betting on researchers at UWI to come up with more money making ideas that could benefit the government, quote: “As we seek to cement a growth doctrine in our society, the university must ensure that its research modalities continue to enlighten and mould socio-economic policies, which are readily adaptable to the needs of our society”.

But is this the best way to spend Government resources?

Government and Research - Focus should be on Energy

Apparently, this is a global thing, as Government, Private Sector and Universities with the research facilities have been collaborating in this way.

 The Government merely is seeking to partner, fund and benefit when the research is commercially applicable, quote: “The Government also plays a key role in facilitating development of a research and development ecosystem, and as our fiscal space improves, we will continue to commit additional funding for research”.

However, Energy, not health should be our focus, as lifestyle changes will improve health.

The prevalence of lifestyle disease such as cancer, heart attack and stroke are linked to the type and amount of food we eat.

This is especially true of fast foods and foods with added sugars that are consumed by children and may be linked to ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) in children as noted in my MICO Wars blog article entitled “How to Spot Hidden Sugar and How to Avoid Eating Too Much”. 

The sale of unregulated Bag juice should be the government focus along with more Agricultural Gardens in High schools as pointed out in my blog article entitled “Why Ministry of Education must support School Gardens as Sugar in Bag Juice linked to Lifestyle Diseases”.

Hopefully, too, they'll expand on the research done by UWI and UTECH on the use of Hydrogen as a Cooking Gas substitute as that would reduce our dependence on imported fuel as noted in my blog article entitled “Why UTECH, GOJ and UWI developing Hydrogen Cooking Gas Cylinders for Hydrogen-Electron Economy”. 

We can even go further and make Hydrogen into Hydrogen fuel cells to be use in Electric Vehicles as explained in my blog article entitled “UTECH and Hydrogen as Cooking Gas – How Hydride Salts make Hydrogen Cooking Gas and Fuel Cells possible”.

No to mention producing Hydrogen for export via using excess Wind energy to convert seawater, with the extracted salts being sold as a value-added product as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “How PCJ Offshore Windfarm may be used to export Hydrogen and Uranium”. 

So stay tuned for more articles on University of the West Indies, Mona, 19th staging of its Research Days!!

How IGL Limited and New Fortress Energy LNG partnership will jumpstart LNG Vehicle Conversion

Jamaica now has Motor vehicle options....or at least the construction industry does.

On Wednesday IGL Limited, producers of a range of gases in partnership with New Fortress launched a range of vehicle that use LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) as reported in the article “Dr. Wheatley Welcomes Launch of LNG-Fuelled Vehicles by IGL, published April 6, 2018 By Chad Bryan, The Jamaica Information Service.

The vehicles were mainly for Tractor heads to be used by IGL for transporting their loads across the island as shown in this JIS YouTube video:

In fact, this is not much different from what National Continental Bakery has been piloting a project to process Waste Cooking Oil into Bio-Diesel to power their fleet as explained in my blog article entitled “How UWI and YCWJ can Waste Cooking Oil for National Bio-Diesel Production”.

From the looks of it, these are ordinary vehicle that have been retrofitted to burn LNG as a fuel; they are no different in any way from ordinary vehicles.

IGL, New Fortress Energy and Jamaica - Ships, Buses, Fleet Vehicle and then Hybrid Cars

Already plans are afoot for the JUTC (Jamaica Urban Transit Company) to retrofit their Diesel and Gasoline powered Buses to use LNG and CNG.

A full rollout of these JUTC buses is scheduled to occur in December 2018 as explained in my blog article entitled “Why the JUTC is adopting LNG and CNG as PCJ need to emphasize Solar, Wind and Biofuel”

NFE (New Fortress Energy), their partner, will also be doing refuelling for LNG powered ships from its Old Harbour regasification plant in May 2018 as reported in the article “New Fortress Energy To Refuel Ships With LNG From Old Harbour Terminal”, published Friday April 6, 2018 by Steven Jackson, The Jamaica Gleaner.

By 2020, the US will not allow any Diesel powered ships to dock in their ports unless they are LNG. New Fortress Energy has decided to seize the opportunity to set up a LNG refueling station and thus capitalize on the coming trend.

Hopefully, they also be offering this vehicle retrofit to fleet vehicles to large companies and MSME (Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises) as suggested in my Geezam blog article entitled “How IGL plans to sell LNG and CNG Vehicles in Jamaica”.

Many MSME have growing fleets of vehicles and are actively seeking a way of saving on travel and fuel costs as IGL plans to do with their trailer heads. Eventually, IGL Ltd and NFE may push into setting up their own LNG and CNG Gas Stations. It may also jumpstart the local conversion of vehicles to run on LNG and CNG.

This may prompt the Government of Jamaica to lower the importation tariff on Hybrid Vehicles, as predicted in my blog article entitled “Why JUTC going Hybrid indicates removal of 60% import duty on Electric Vehicles”.

Such a move would suggest that there is interest in building infrastructure to support such vehicles. Jamaica benefits in the long term from cleaner air as LNG burns more cleanly and efficiently in motor vehicles and is more energy dense than Gasoline.

University of East Anglia's School of Chemistry discovers microplastic in Bottled Water

Dear reader, what I'm about to publish is so disturbing, I might have to put out an alert for this. Not to mention thinking of making my own water as explained in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to Make Distilled Water using a Solar Desalinator”.

Turns out that your favourite brands of bottled water may be contaminated with microplastic according to a study done by University of East Anglia's School of Chemistry as reported in the article “Top bottled water brands contaminated with plastic particles: report”, published March 15, 2018 by Kerry Sheridan, PhysOrg.

Their research has been vetted and is considered accurate to quote lead researcher Andrew Mayes, from UEA's School of Chemistry: “We have been involved with independently reviewing the findings and methodology to ensure the study is robust and credible…. The results stack up”.

Representatives from the International Bottled Water Association, the asociation that represents the bottled water industry took issue with the findings, claiming that the research was not peer-reviewed and quote: “not based on sound science” and point out that, quote: “A recent scientific study published in the peer-reviewed journal Water Research in February 2018 concluded that no statistically relevant amount of microplastic can be found in water in single-use plastic bottles”.

They even threw in a bit of uncertainty on fact that if microplastic is present, it would have no known health effects to quote the International Bottled Water Association: “There is no scientific consensus on the potential health impacts of microplastic particles. The data on the topic is limited and conclusions differ dramatically from one study to another”.

So how did the researchers conduct their research?

University of East Anglia's School of Chemistry Bottled water Research - Microplastic exposed

The Researchers tested the water by staining it with the fluorescent Nile Red dye, which makes plastic fluorescent when irradiated with blue light.

They then did as chemical assay on the plastic discovered in these samples and realized that it was of the following types:

1.      Nylon

2.      Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)

3.      Polypropylene

The researcher conducted a three months study and discovered that 93% of samples taken from the following top brands of bottled water have microplastic suspended in their water:

1.      Aqua

2.      Aquafina

3.      Bisleri

4.      Dasani

5.      Epura

6.      Evian

7.      Gerolsteiner

8.      Minalba

9.      Nestle Pure Life

10.  San Pellegrino

11.  Wahaha

They took their samples from some 250 bottles of water purchased in the following countries:

1.      Brazil

2.      China

3.      India

4.      Indonesia,

5.      Kenya

6.      Lebanon

7.      Mexico

8.      Thailand

9.      United States

These are basically the material used to make the bottled water, with Polypropylene being used to make bottle caps.

Dr. Sherri Mason of the State University of New York at Fredonia was quick to point out that the particles were not as small as expected and seem to have been produced during the manufacture of the bottle, quote: “In this study, 65 percent of the particles we found were actually fragments and not fibers. I think that most of the plastic that we are seeing is coming from the bottle itself.

It is coming from the cap. It is coming from the industrial process of bottling the water”.

In other words, the plastic bottles are not disintegrating and dissolving into the water, but have angular shapes when viewed under microscope, suggesting that they were mechanically cut, not gradually worn by chemical attack by the water. 

On average the concentration of the particles range from “zero to more than 10,000 likely plastic particles in a single bottle” as stated in their research paper or roughly 10.4 plastic particles per liter. Even smaller particles were more common, averaging about 325 per liter.

These irregularly shaped particles ranged from 100 micron (0.10 millimeter) in size and are thus microparticle. These are considerably smaller than microbeads found in bathing products such as soaps, gels and scrubs as noted in my blog article entitled “How US microbeads ban by 2017 means NEPA ban coming to protect Coral Reefs”. 

It is true that water is slightly negative, and bottle water, being almost ultrapure, can attack positively charged ions in the bottle, as this video explains:

But unless the water contains metallic ions this is unlikely. So clearly there were the result of the mechanical process involve in making plastic bottled.

So what does this mean for our health?

Microplastic and Human Health - Unknown side effects as we may just pass it out

For one, it means that I'll be drinking more Tap water as of now.

That's because it's safer as previous research by Orb Media has found plastic particles in tap water but in smaller amounts to quote Dr. Sherri Mason: “Tap water, by and large, is much safer than bottled water”.

As for the effect on humans, this is unclear as no definitive studies have connected microplastic, being as most research has mainly being correlations and have not ruled out other external environmental factors as pointed out by Dr. Sherri Mason, quote: “There are connections to increases in certain kinds of cancer to lower sperm count to increases in conditions like ADHD and autism. We know that they are connected to these synthetic chemicals in the environment and we know that plastics are providing kind of a means to get those chemicals into our bodies”.

Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for North America at Oceana, a marine advocacy group that was not involved in the research says that this is more evide3nce that we need to stop using plastic bottles, as the long term health risks are still unknown, quote: “We know plastics are building up in marine animals, and this means we too are being exposed, some of us every day.

It's more urgent now than ever before to make plastic water bottles a thing of the past”.

Already the WHO (World Health Organization) has begun investigating this discovery of microplastics in bottled water as well as tap water and its potential health risks as noted in the article “WHO launches health review after microplastics found in 90% of bottled water”, published Thursday 15 March 2018 by Graham Readfearn,  The Guardian. 

Then again, being as this plastic is undigestible by the human body, would we not pass it out in our stool, as no enzymes exist that can break it down?

I'd be a little more worried if this was nanoparticle sized particles, as those could effectively be nano-machines, as at that size they are basically high reactive nanoparticles that can react with enzymes and cheimcals and cause real harm.

Still more reason to invest in a water filter.....and drink piped water!!!

How MIT MOF makes Moisture Farms for use in Space Travel possible

“The advancement we have achieved over our proof-of-concept demonstration last year is the testing of a small-scale prototype in desert conditions where we believe absorption-based water harvesting systems are most practical. In addition, we have made several design improvements which enabled operation at greatly improved efficiencies.

Sameer Rao, a post-doctoral research associate who worked on the project in an interview with Digital Trends.

MIT is at it again!!! This time they've developed the technology that makes the Moisture farms on Tatooine from Star Wars seem possible.

They've basically developed a MOF (metal-organic framework) that attract water molecules and condenses it as vapour as explained in the article “MIT’s latest invention pulls clean drinking water out of thin air”, published 23 March 2018 by Luke Dormehl, Digitaltrends.

First a quick reminder of what a Moisture farm is and what life is on an automated farm run by droids.

The MOF is technology that MIT has developed will make it possible to extract water from the driest desert, making it survivable, if not habitable. The MIT Team consists of the following notables:

1.      MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Evelyn Wang

2.      MIT postdoc  Sameer Rao

3.      Graduate student Hyunho Kim

4.      Research scientist Sungwoo Yang

5.      Research scientist Shankar Narayanan who is currently at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and alumnus Ari Umans SM ’15

The team reported their findings in the journal Science in a article that was co-authored by Berkeley graduate student Eugene Kapustin, project scientist Hiroyasu Furukawa, and professor of chemistry Omar Yaghi as noted in the article “Water, water everywhere … even in the air”, published April 14, 2017 by David Chandler, MIT News Office.

The MIT's team has been testing their tech in the dry air of Tempe, Arizona to provide more evidence that it truly can extract water from even the driest air.

So how does the MOF work to extract moisture from the air?

MIT and MOF Moisture Farming – Space Colonization Now within grasp

Indeed, harvesting water from the air is nothing new.

Fog harvesting is already done in Chile and Morocco but requires very moist air, with a relative humidity of 100 percent as this video explains.

Fog harvesting works in very limited regions. The alternative, which is to chill the air to its dew point, is called Dew Harvesting.

This is basically a refrigerator turned inside out and is energy intensive, as power has to be expended to keep the condenser plate cool. Worse, it need humidity levels as high as 50% to generate any significant amount of water and as such, is best done at night where the cooling equiptment can operate more efficiently as this video explains.

There are also “air wells” that are designed with special hydrophobic material that require no energy to collect water.

The MOF Method has none of these limitations and is completely passive as this video explains.

The researchers believe that a scaled-up version of their miniature MOF extraction system could output more than a quarter-liter of water per day per kilogram of MOF as predicted by Sameer Rao, a post-doctoral research associate who worked on the project, quote: “…By careful design and optimization, we developed a device which is well suited for operation in arid conditions and under negative dew points in which competing commercially mature technologies such as refrigeration-based dewing cycles are infeasible.”

Still, its cost might make it impractical for all but the driest of places on earth. But its application for Space Travel seems more feasible, making colonizing the solar system and the Asteroid belt possible.

Combined with extracting water from Urine as explained in my blog article entitled “University of Ghent Solar Powered Urine to Beer Converter can end African Water Crisis” it could be use to extract water from the living habitats to be set up on the Moon and Mars, making the recycling of water for drinking purposes possible.