‘Fake news’ spreads quickly, but does it only spread among those most likely to believe it?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/tech/false-biden-video-twitter/index.html

False video of Joe Biden viewed 1 million times on Twitter

A deceptively edited video of Joe Biden making it appear the Democratic presidential nominee forgot what state he was in was viewed more than one million times on Twitter over the weekend.

In the video, Biden addresses a crowd — saying, "Hello, Minnesota!" The event did, indeed, take place in St Paul, Minnesota.

In the unedited, original video, signs in front of and behind Biden on the stage read "Text MN to 30330" — making it clear the event was in Minnesota.

However in the false video, the on-stage signs were edited to read "Tampa, Florida," and "Text FL to 30330."

Can we extend this to all surveillance?

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-monitor-remote-workers-ethically/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mitsmr+%28MIT+Sloan+Management+Review%29

How to Monitor Remote Workers — Ethically

Remote working is no short-term arrangement that will dissipate when society reopens — it’s here to stay. A fundamental paradigm shift solidified the moment that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey encouraged employees to work from home forever. Influential companies, including Google, Facebook, and Square, followed suit — and as these early adopters move, so do the rest. A notable 88% of organizations worldwide now either encourage or require their employees to work from home, and they reap significant benefits from the arrangement. Freed from tedious and stressful commutes, employees have more time to work: Up to 400 additional hours per year per employee could be reallocated to their workdays, resulting in productivity improvements across 77% of the workforce.

Coupled with this productivity rise, however, is an alarming surge in monitoring to scrutinize employee activity. Workers have long been aware of managers tracking the content of their emails, social media accounts, meeting records, time sheets, and workspace utilization, but with working from home now widespread, the stakes are a lot higher.

Worth reading.

https://onezero.medium.com/what-facebook-has-fixed-since-the-2016-election-and-what-it-hasnt-5354e9fb4227

What Social Media Companies Have Fixed Since the 2016 Election

And a few things they haven’t

How to win friends and influence people.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-43754-1_3

Privacy and Tracking

In order for ubiquitous computing to realize its full potential, it is necessary for service providers to detect the presence of user devices to identify the needs and wishes of the associated users—both as this relates to the performance of services and the implementation of privacy preferences. We take a large step in the direction of improving service performance by introducing an approach to tie a person’s online behavior (e.g., as represented by her HTML cookies) with her physical behavior (e.g., location and brick-and-mortar purchases). This enables insights from web browsing to be applied to in-store sales (e.g., using coupons), and data related to user location and behavior to be used to improve the understanding of the user’s online needs. We also show how to tie a user profile to a user communications channel, which enables messaging (e.g., alerts, reminders and coupons) that is tied to the detection of user actions, whether on- or offline. We show how to combine this advance in profiling capabilities with a practically manageable approach to enhance end-user privacy. One aspect of this is an extension of the domain of observations to which users can (or can deny to) grant permissions, e.g., allowing individual users a practical method to determine under what circumstances facial recognition can be used for personalization purposes. Our approach is backwards compatible with existing consumer devices; can be rolled out gradually; and is designed with attention given to the usability of the resulting system.

Is this article suggesting that mere humans can’t understand Facebook?

https://academic.oup.com/jeclap/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jeclap/lpaa077/5940770

The Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Future of Competition Law Enforcement

In a future in which the evidential underpinnings for initiating competition law investigations could begin to shift towards a reliance upon the use of artificial intelligence, this paper outlines some of the key opportunities and risks for businesses and regulators.

In October 2017, the European Commission (the Commission) published a consultancy tender seeking advice on how artificial intelligence (AI) could improve its processes of evidence management, legal drafting and—as is the focus of this paper—its market intelligence gathering.1 More recently, in its AI White Paper of February 2020, the Commission again expressed an intention to understand how AI can equip ‘law enforcement authorities with appropriate tools’.2

Looking at faces changes how we look at faces…

https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.30820/0171-3434-2020-2-45/facial-recognition-technologies-and-the-new-physiognomic-era-volume-43-2020-issue-2

Facial recognition technologies and the new physiognomic era

The current overproduction of images of faces in digital photographs and videos, and the widespread use of facial recognition technologies have important effects on the way we understand ourselves and others. This is because facial recognition technologies create new circulation pathways of images that transform portraits and photographs into material for potential personal identification. In other words, different types of images of faces become available to the scrutiny of facial recognition technologies. In these new circulation pathways, images are continually shared between many different actors who use (or abuse) them for different purposes. Besides this distribution of images, the categorization practices involved in the development and use of facial recognition systems reinvigorate physiognomic assumptions and judgments (e.g., about beauty, race, dangerousness). They constitute the framework through which faces are interpreted. This paper shows that, because of this procedure, facial recognition technologies introduce new and far-reaching »facialization« processes, which reiterate old discriminatory practices.

A sure fire discussion stimulus for my classes. When should your car kill you?

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Machine-Ethics-and-Automated-Vehicles-Goodall/4be6deba004cd99fa5434cd3c297747be9d45bb5

Machine Ethics and Automated Vehicles

Road vehicle travel at a reasonable speed involves some risk, even when using computer-controlled driving with failure-free hardware and perfect sensing. A fully-automated vehicle must continuously decide how to allocate this risk without a human driver’s oversight. These are ethical decisions, particularly in instances where an automated vehicle cannot avoid crashing. In this chapter, I introduce the concept of moral behavior for an automated vehicle, argue the need for research in this area through responses to anticipated critiques, and discuss relevant applications from machine ethics and moral modeling research.

Resources.

https://www.makeuseof.com/4-unique-ways-to-get-datasets-for-your-machine-learning-project/

4 Unique Ways to Get Datasets for Your Machine Learning Project

Never assume that ‘someone will ask eventually.’

Former Sen. Mark Udall and Former House Chairman Bob Goodlatte Challenge Government’s Secrecy Around Claims of “Inherent Authority” to Conduct Mass Domestic Surveillance

The Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability (PPSA) issued a press release this week. It begins:

Former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) are leading an effort by Demand Progress Education Fund (DPEF) and the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability (PPSA) to compel the government to come clean about the legal basis for mass domestic surveillance of Americans in the absence of Congressional authorization.

“Our request follows months of efforts by Members of Congress and civil liberties organizations to get the government to explain on what authority the government bases domestic surveillance of U.S. persons,” said Bob Goodlatte, senior policy advisor to PPSA who joined with former Sen. Mark Udall to add their names to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted today to the Department of Justice, FBI and other agencies.

Section 215, known as the “business records provision” of the PATRIOT Act (later amended and reauthorized by the USA FREEDOM Act), governed the warrantless surveillance of a wide range of personal information held by businesses. To acquire such sensitive records, all the FBI had to do was assert the data sought was relevant to a foreign intelligence investigation. With the expiration of Section 215 on March 15, Members of Congress and civil liberties organizations want to know the current legal basis for government surveillance.

Read more on PPSA. I would really encourage readers who are new to the issue of massive domestic surveillance of U.S. persons to read the entire announcement and its follow some of the links to find out more. Are you really okay with the idea of the government buying huge databases with tons of personal information about you, like enriched voter databases? How about if they go and buy hacked databases from sites where people seek support for mental health, disability, or gender-identity related issues? Even if you’re “just curious” about how the government might justify such acquisitions or programs, find out more.

Legislation as a ‘we gotta do something!’ reaction.

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-politicians-urge-deployment-of-surveillance-technology-after-series-of-attacks/

French politicians urge deployment of surveillance technology after series of attacks

France has so far resisted a broad rollout of surveillance technology in public spaces. That could be about to change.

After a series of bloody attacks, right-wing politicians and a minister in President Emmanuel Macron's government have called for increased use of surveillance technology, breaking with privacy advocates in the name of tracking would-be assailants and preventing further violence.

… "The idea is to use artificial intelligence to track suspicious behavior, and it's already being done in several countries," Djebbari told a national radio station on Sunday.

The comment seemed to go against recommendations from France's privacy regulator, the CNIL, which has blocked attempts to deploy facial recognition cameras in public spaces as being "neither necessary, nor proportionate" to their aims of boosting security.

Growing concern, as expected.

https://fpf.org/2020/10/30/exploring-consumer-attitudes-about-privacy/

Exploring Consumer Attitudes About Privacy

… A new study, “Privacy Front and Center,” from Consumer Reports’ Digital Lab with support from Omidyar Network, found that American consumers are increasingly concerned about privacy and data security when purchasing new products and services, which may be a competitive advantage to companies that raise the bar for privacy. A majority of smart product owners (62%) worry about potential loss of privacy when buying them for their home or family

… The Cisco 2020 Consumer Privacy Survey, “Protecting Data Privacy to Maintain Digital Trust,” found that protecting data privacy remains important to consumers during the pandemic.

… In addition, Deloitte recently released its 2020 Digital Consumer Trends survey, which focused on the growth in smart device use and data in the United Kingdom. It found that UK consumers have become less concerned about the use of their data.

Be careful what you promise or don’t promise?

https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/experians-gdpr-violation-leaves-companies-scrambling-to-understand-legitimate-interest/

Experian’s GDPR violation leaves companies scrambling to understand ‘legitimate interest’

A General Data Protection Regulation enforcement notice from United Kingdom regulators could leave credit reporting giant Experian on the hook for as much as $24 million – baffling U.S. and European Union companies alike, say legal experts.

The investigation that led to the notice found issues in each of the big three credit reporting agencies, and the data brokerage economy in general. While Experian, TransUnion and Equifax received praise for working with regulators on several of the problems apparently endemic to the industry, Experian reportedly failed to meet all its requests.

An enforcement notice is a warning that a fine will come should a company not take action. Experian now has nine months to do so, pending appeal.

The key issue flagged in the Experian enforcement is one that all companies that handle data from brokers need to consider when establishing data privacy practices.

“At a high level, the issue is transparency. It’s one of the key pillars of data protection,” said Sarah Pearce, an attorney at Paul Hastings’ London offices. “You need a lawful basis for each use of data.”

In GDPR, there are several categories of ways to legally obtain data. Companies can outright the users for permission to store and process data, for example. Or, companies can claim “legitimate interest,” where the data use is necessary for business purposes that aren’t seen as threats to privacy.

Direct marketing via mail is considered legitimate interest. But, in this case, the consent to use the data had been received by a broker that hadn’t specified the data would be sold. That negates the buyer (in this case Experian) being able to claim direct marketing as a legitimate interest.

The result of a perception of ‘doing a bad job?’

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/30/big-techs-blackbox-algorithms-face-regulatory-oversight-under-eu-plan/

Big tech’s ‘blackbox’ algorithms face regulatory oversight under EU plan

Major Internet platforms will be required to open up their algorithms to regulatory oversight under proposals European lawmakers are set to introduce next month.

In a speech today Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager suggested algorithmic accountability will be a key plank of the forthcoming legislative digital package — with draft rules incoming that will require platforms to explain how their recommendation systems work as well as offering users more control over them.

“The rules we’re preparing would give all digital services a duty to cooperate with regulators. And the biggest platforms would have to provide more information on the way their algorithms work, when regulators ask for it,” she said, adding that platforms will also “have to give regulators and researchers access to the data they hold — including ad archives”.

Timely.

https://www.bespacific.com/federal-law-enforcement-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/

Federal Law Enforcement Use of Facial Recognition Technology

CRS report via LC – Federal Law Enforcement Use of Facial Recognition Technology, October 27, 2020: “Law enforcement agencies’ use of facial recognition technology (FRT), while not a new practice, has received increased attention from policymakers and the public. Some of the concerns raised revolve around the accuracy of the technology, including potential race-, gender-, and age-related biases; the process of collecting, retaining, and securing images contained in various facial recognition databases; public notification of the use of facial recognition and other image-capturing technology; and policies or standards governing law enforcement agencies’ use of the technology. Some of these concerns have manifested in actions such as federal, state, and city efforts to prohibit or bound law enforcement agencies’ use of FRT. In addition, some companies producing facial recognition software have placed new barriers to law enforcement using their technologies. FRT is one of several biometric technologies employed by law enforcement agencies, which also include fingerprint, palm print, DNA, and iris scans. FRT can be used by law enforcement for a variety of purposes such as generating investigative leads, identifying victims of crimes, helping sort faces in photos that are part of forensic evidence, and helping verify the identity of inmates before they are released from prison. However, the frequency and extent to which FRT is used at various phases of the criminal justice system is unknown. It is most often discussed by law enforcement officials as being used to help identify suspects…”

(Related)

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/5-emerging-ai-and-machine-learning-trends-to-watch-in-2021

5 Emerging AI And Machine Learning Trends To Watch In 2021

… But it can be easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees when it comes to trends in the development and use of AI and ML technologies. As we approach the end of a turbulent 2020, here’s a big-picture look at five key AI and machine learning trends– not just in the types of applications they are finding their way into, but also in how they are being developed and the ways they are being used.

… Persistent Ethical Questions Around AI Technology

Earlier this year as protests against racial injustice were at their peak, several leading IT vendors, including Microsoft, IBM and Amazon, announced that they would limit the use of their AI-based facial recognition technology by police departments until there are federal laws regulating the technology’s use, according to a Washington Post story.

That has put the spotlight on a range of ethical questions around the increasing use of artificial intelligence technology. That includes the obvious misuse of AI for “deepfake” misinformation efforts and for cyberattacks. But it also includes grayer areas such as the use of AI by governments and law enforcement organizations for surveillance and related activities and the use of AI by businesses for marketing and customer relationship applications.

Interesting. Is this really the only one?

https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-republican-party-hackers-stole-641a8174e51077703888e2fa89070e12

Wisconsin Republican Party says hackers stole $2.3 million

Hackers have stolen $2.3 million from the Wisconsin Republican Party’s account that was being used to help reelect President Donald Trump in the key battleground state, the party’s chairman told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The party noticed the suspicious activity on Oct. 22 and contacted the FBI on Friday, said Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt.

… There have been more than 800 attempted phishing attacks for financial gain targeting the Wisconsin Democratic Party this campaign cycle, but none has been successful, said party spokeswoman Courtney Beyer.

The alleged hack is “certainly embarrassing” for Republicans, said Matt Rothschild, leader of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, an independent group that tracks campaign donations and spending.

… Hitt said the hackers manipulated invoices from four vendors who were being paid for direct mail for Trump’s reelection efforts as well as for pro-Trump material such as hats to be handed out to supporters. Invoices and other documents were altered so when the party paid them, the money went to the hackers instead of the vendors, Hitt said.

It was discovered after someone noticed that an invoice was generated that should not have been, he said.

Hitt said it appears the attack began as a phishing attempt and no data appears to have been stolen, said party spokesman Alec Zimmerman.

Protecting my Ethical Hacking students.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/10/the-legal-risks-of-security-research.html

The Legal Risks of Security Research

Sunoo Park and Kendra Albert have published “A Researcher’s Guide to Some Legal Risks of Security Research.”

From a summary:

Such risk extends beyond anti-hacking laws, implicating copyright law and anti-circumvention provisions (DMCA §1201), electronic privacy law (ECPA), and cryptography export controls, as well as broader legal areas such as contract and trade secret law.

Our Guide gives the most comprehensive presentation to date of this landscape of legal risks, with an eye to both legal and technical nuance. Aimed at researchers, the public, and technology lawyers alike, its aims both to provide pragmatic guidance to those navigating today’s uncertain legal landscape, and to provoke public debate towards future reform.

Comprehensive, and well worth reading.

You can’t sue the virus (remember, I’m not a lawyer, so I might be wrong) but everyone else is fair game.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-aba-coronavirus-covid-19-task-force/

The ABA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Task Force

This webpage is intended as a national source of information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) and the delivery of legal services. It includes resources on remote service delivery, court access and rules changes, legal needs, public benefits programs, and pro bono mobilization. We appreciate receiving new information for inclusion on the site, preferably links to dynamic content that is updated regularly. About the Task Force – In response to the growing legal needs of Americans arising from the coronavirus (COVID-19), the American Bar Association has created a nationwide task force of volunteer lawyers and judges from across the legal profession. The task force will identify the legal needs arising from the pandemic, make recommendations to address those needs, and help mobilize volunteer lawyers and legal professionals to assist people who need help. The task force includes experts in disaster response; health law; insurance; legal needs of families to protect basic human needs such as food, shelter, medical and employment benefits; criminal justice; domestic violence; civil rights and social justice…”

Good or bad? Perhaps inevitable?

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/10/trump-internet-memes-section-230-disinformation-reddit/616890/

The Internet Won’t Be the Same After Trump

Being online has changed Donald Trump. He was the internet’s candidate in 2016—he appears in Urban Dictionary’s definition of meme god—and his campaign leveraged the power of Facebook advertising to beat Hillary Clinton. Since then, he’s become even more obsessed with petty grievances and conspiracy theories that play well on Twitter, a platform used by just 22 percent of the American population. On several occasions, the president has employed Reddit posts to help him make points or issue threats.

Trump has also changed the internet in obvious ways. During his first term, Americans have watched his administration relish the opportunity to destroy net neutrality—the core principle of a free and open internet. We’ve had to ask whether social-media platforms should penalize the president for threatening and glorifying violence, and whether the president might in turn just ban internet companies he doesn’t like. We’ve seen some people on the internet turn into emotionally-numb doom-scrollers, while others have joined the #Resistance, engaging in viral virtue signaling and creating a micro-economy of political merch.

But Trump’s impact on the internet is bigger than its weirdest memes or its most prolonged Twitter fights. His presidency has changed how Americans communicate with one another on the internet, heightening its tone of divisiveness and suspicion, shaping its norms and rules, and creating an expectation that each day online will be more surreal than the one before. We’ll look back at these years as an era of major upheaval in nearly everything about being online: The internet is a fundamentally different place from what it was in 2016, and using it the way many people do, the president’s influence is undeniable. Four years in, Americans are only starting to get a sense of how Trump has altered daily American life. Regardless of what happens on Election Day, we can expect four of the biggest changes to last.

(Related)

https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/10/29/explore-the-interactions-of-us-politicians-through-this-twitter-network-tool/

Explore the Twitter interactions of US politicians with this social network tool

Mozilla and the SMAT (Social Media Analysis Toolkit) team have produced a free interactive network map showing the Twitter connections of US politicians.

The live graph depicts who the likes of President Trump and Joe Biden are interacting with in the build-up to the 2020 presidential election. It’s designed to expose the networks of influence that can adversely affect elections and offer insights into communities, sectarianism, and suspicious influences.

… You can click on an individual node or search for a Twitter account to explore that user’s connections. Their interactions are divided between outbound activity showing the accounts they’ve mentioned and replied to, and inbound activity displaying the users who have replied to and mentioned them.

… You can try the tool out for yourself at this link.

I think my niece is techie enough to use this.

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-find-data-best-music-past/

How to Find Data for the Best Music of the Past

Here, we'll show you how to use Data.world to discover the most popular music over the past several decades.

… Data.world is a social platform for finding and sharing data sets. It allows you to create projects that use publicly available data. It also has a ton of integrations that allow it to work with many popular tools. On top of all that, it has a very generous free tier for personal use.

Tools.

https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2020/10/witeboard-simple-online-whiteboard.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+freetech4teachers/cGEY+(Free+Technology+for+Teachers)

Witeboard - A Simple Online Whiteboard

Last week a reader named Donna sent me an email asking me what I knew about Witeboard. It was a new tool for me so I gave it a try.

Witeboard is a collaborative online whiteboard. To use it just head to the site and start drawing. Witeboard has some basic drawing tools and text tools. To share your Witeboard whiteboard all you have to do is give someone the URL that's assigned to it and they can start drawing on it.

It is possible to create an account on Witeboard but you don't need to create one. The benefit of creating an account is that you can save your work and access it from multiple devices.

In the following video I demonstrate how to use Witeboard.

You might say it will impact Computer Security…

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/the-third-world-war-may-already-be-happening-online/

The Third World War May Already Be Happening … Online

How do global conflicts look when guns and cannons are replaced with keyboards and smartphones?

(Related) An intelligence tool works for anyone.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-helping-pentagon-assess-disinfo-campaigns/

The AI Company Helping the Pentagon Assess Disinfo Campaigns

Primer can quickly sort through hundreds of sources to identify, say, Russian interference in Azerbaijan. It sells its tech to Walmart too.

Interesting. I thought it was primarily the CIO who became exhausted.

https://www.law.com/2020/10/28/breach-fatigue-is-real-and-could-impact-corporate-legals-cybersecurity-messaging/

'Breach Fatigue' Is Real and Could Impact Corporate Legal's Cybersecurity Messaging

A panel held during Wednesday's Women, Influence & Power in Law Virtual Summit examined the exhaustive levels of detail required for legal departments to truly be proactive about data protection, from fine-tuning language in vendor agreements to the way duties are assigned within the company itself.

My local library has copies.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/29/cyber_privacy_april_falcon_doss_interview/

Can we stop megacorps from using and abusing our data? That ship has sailed, ex-NSA lawyer argues in new book

Interview: Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care is the title of a new book from April Falcon Doss, formerly associate general counsel for intelligence law at the US National Security Agency. Doss spoke to The Register about her concerns with pervasive data collection and its potential for harm.

These days the author is chair of cybersecurity and privacy at law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr in Baltimore, Maryland.

A very fanciful headline.

https://www.databreaches.net/pharma-data-breaches-should-stop-once-data-protection-law-comes-into-force/

Pharma data breaches should stop once data protection law comes into force

Na Vijayshankar reports:

Three major cyber attacks in the Indian pharma industry in the last few months have left people wondering whether there is a pattern indicating the reason for this spurt. First was the Breach Candy Hospital one in February 2020 where over 121 million medical records were compromised. Of these, 120 million were images stored in the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine system consisting of X-rays, scan reports, etc. One million records contained Aadhaar information, medical history, etc. The data breach reportedly occurred because the access system of the hospital was compromised. Though this was an alarming data breach, the matter was hushed up and there was no apparent investigation by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) or any further announcements in the media.

Hushed up or downplayed, indeed. That is a big breach and it never showed up in any of this site’s news searches. This is the first this site is learning about that one.

In October 2020, Dr Lal PathLabs reported a data breach of millions of records because their Cloud records reportedly did not have a password for access. Again, this was brushed under the carpet and no action was initiated by CERT-IN.

This one we at least heard about, as with this one:

More recently, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, which was testing a Covid vaccine from Russia, was attacked. Questions must be asked whether the lack of prompt action by CERT-IN earlier emboldened the criminals to continue their attacks on these pharma companies, which are soft targets holding highly valuable data assets.

Read more on IndiaLegal. The author offers an informed perspective on what a constructive approach to reducing breaches in this sector might look like.

Could AI own a company that owns a patent?

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/10/28/uspto-benchmark-study-artificial-intelligence-patent-landscape/id=126847/

USPTO Releases Benchmark Study on the Artificial Intelligence Patent Landscape

“The diffusion trend for artificial intelligence inventor-patentees started at 1% in 1976 and increased to 25% in 2018, which means that ‘25% of all unique inventor-patentees in 2018 used AI technologies in their granted patents.’”

On October 27, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a report titled “Inventing AI: Tracing the diffusion of artificial intelligence with U.S. patents.” The study showed that artificial intelligence (AI) patent applications increased by more than 100% between 2002 and 2018, from 30,000 to over 60,000, and the overall share of patent applications containing AI subject matter rose from 9% to nearly 16%.

It can’t hurt.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2844999/cheap-free-ways-make-old-pc-run-faster.html#slide3

11 cheap or free ways to make your old PC run faster

Perspective. The abandoned railroad map suggests something, I’m not sure what.

https://www.factable.com/history/maps-that-show-us-a-new-perspective/3/?chrome=1

Maps That Show Us A New Perspective

… these maps will shed light on the true scope of things and may even help you obtain a more worldly perspective.