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Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Stop Facebook From Using Your Private Info: A Beginner’s Guide |WSJ

Privacy | Facebook | Social Media

ILLUSTRATION: Dan PAGE



Mom always said to share, but Facebook has us thinking twice. Here, how to regain command of your digital privacy from social media sites to dangers lurking in your own smartphone

SOCIAL MEDIA was supposed to be a fun, lively place to connect with high-school flings, share photos, brag humbly and get in occasional spats over “Star Wars” sequels. But recent revelations about the ways political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica trawled through Facebook FB -0.04% data have made people realize they’ve shared much more than just cat memes online.

A recent HarrisX poll found that 46% of Americans surveyed don’t believe Facebook protects their personal information, often more than twice that of rivals Twitter , Google, LinkedIn and Snapchat—another 25% were “uncertain.” While most people favor stricter regulations than ever around data privacy, years of studies by groups like the Pew Research Center have found that users are specifically concerned about who had access to the online information they share.

“It’s not so much the old definition of privacy—‘I want the right to be left alone,’” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and tech research at Pew, who sums up the new goal as “I want to control the world’s understanding of who I am.”

A HarrisX poll found that 46% of Americans surveyed don’t believe Facebook protects their personal information.Read more...

Monday, May 7, 2018

Our fiction addiction: Why humans need stories | BBC

Fiction | Literature | Evolution

by David Robson | 3 May 2018

The epic of Gilgamesh has endured for 4,000 years, with elements of storytelling that teach us how to cooperate (Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum)


It sounds like the perfect summer blockbuster.

A handsome king is blessed with superhuman strength, but his insufferable arrogance means that he threatens to wreak havoc on his kingdom. Enter a down-to-earth wayfarer who challenges him to fight. The king ends the battle chastened, and the two heroes become fast friends and embark on a series of dangerous quests across the kingdom.

The fact that this tale is still being read today is itself remarkable. It is the Epic of Gilgamesh, engraved on ancient Babylonian tablets 4,000 years ago, making it the oldest surviving work of great literature. We can assume that the story was enormously popular at the time, given that later iterations of the poem can be found over the next millennium.

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