In the Media
ACLU to petition Worcester City Council on surveillance transparency, body cams
Worcester Telegram -- 10/01/2018
A Northeastern University study of the Boston pilot concluded cameras can improve trust with the public and provide evidence to ensure fairer results at trial.
Amazon’s looming challenge: Europe’s antitrust laws
Vox -- 10/01/2018
Looking back in retrospect, that was probably a mistake. It seems to have singlehandedly ended a two-generation trajectory toward cheaper airfares. Northeastern University economics professor John Kwoka’s retrospective assessment of recent mergers finds that this kind of mistake has been made often.
Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte Exceeds Expectations, But Will It Turn The Tide For Sluggish Stock?
Forbes -- 10/01/2018
Bruce Clark, a professor of marketing at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, said that sales of pumpkin spice latte have proved more popular than in the past. “When the world is crazy, a pumpkin spice latte is particularly comforting,” he observed.
Scientists discover female termites who don’t need males to reproduce
Newsweek -- 10/01/2018
Dr. Rebecca Rosengaus, associate professor in the department of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern University, who was not involved in the study, told Newsweek: “I was surprised that even today, we can find sexually reproducing glyptotermes nakajimai and therefore, we are witnessing evolution and divergence in action!”…
How one Iowa town made peace with the Mississippi River
Christian Science Monitor -- 10/01/2018
“Some of the traditional ways of fortifying rivers – hardened shorelines and engineering solutions – have tons of repercussions that we don’t always take into account,” says Samuel Muñoz, an assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering at Northeastern University in Boston.
Here’s How to Turn Off Google’s Saved Searches and Personalized Results
Entrepreneur -- 10/01/2018
Although as much as 11.7 percent of search engine results may show differences due to personalization, according to a 2013 paper by Northeastern University’s Algorithm Auditing Research Group, researchers were surprised to find that past searches and browsing history did not seem to inform results in a signfiicant way. They found that a user’s location — as well as the status of being signed into a Google account — had the most impact on results. (Note that in this paper, researchers included localization in their definition of personalization.) …
Mobile websites can tap into your phone’s sensors without asking
Wired -- 10/01/2018
That mobile browsers offer developers access to sensors isn’t necessarily problematic on its own. It’s what helps those services automatically adjust their layout, for example, when you switch your phone’s orientation. And the World Wide Web Consortium standards body has codified how web applications can access sensor data. But the researchers—Anupam Das of North Carolina State University, Gunes Acar of Princeton University, Nikita Borisov of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Amogh Pradeep of Northeastern University—found that the standards allow for unfettered access to certain sensors. And sites are using it.
Fortnite season 6: What parents need to know
NBC News -- 10/01/2018
That said, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours of screen time a day for kids age 2 and older — and that’s from all sources: phones, tablets, computers, video games and TV. And the best way to enforce that limit is to model that behavior ourselves. Managing screen time in Fortnite is the same as with any other technology, points out Keith Smith, PhD, assistant professor of marketing at Northeastern University, who specializes in digital products, social media and online environments.
The unspoken reason Christine Blasey Ford may be viewed differently than Anita Hill
CNN -- 10/01/2018
The dominant visual image of Hill reinforces another point — the sense of unique isolation she felt, says Moya Bailey, an assistant professor at Northeastern University in Boston whose work focuses on race and gender representations in the media.
The Always-On Police Camera
The Atlantic -- 10/01/2018
“Facial recognition is probably the most menacing, dangerous surveillance technology ever invented,” Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, told me in an email. “We should all be extremely skeptical of having it deployed in any wearable technology, particularly in contexts [where] the surveilled are so vulnerable, such as in many contexts involving law enforcement.”…
Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information
Gizmodo -- 10/01/2018
Giridhari Venkatadri, Piotr Sapiezynski, and Alan Mislove of Northeastern University, along with Elena Lucherini of Princeton University, did a series of tests that involved handing contact information over to Facebook for a group of test accounts in different ways and then seeing whether that information could be used by an advertiser. They came up with a novel way to detect whether that information became available to advertisers by looking at the stats provided by Facebook about the size of an audience after contact information is uploaded. They go into this in greater length and technical detail in their paper.
US Wireless Video Streaming Sucks, Study Says
Motherboard -- 10/01/2018
Researchers at Northeastern University conducted half a million data traffic testsacross 161 countries to help determine which ISPs routinely hamstring streaming performance. They found that carriers consistently apply arbitrary restrictions on video streaming that have nothing to do with managing network load.