Immaculate Conception to Digital Innovation: A Recap of Recent Headlines on Sharks, Music, Crypto, and Global Health Disparities
Brief:
🔶 Italian Aquarium's Female Shark Gives Birth to 'Virgin' Baby Shark
🔶 Apple's Controversial Child Safety Features Delayed
🔶 Spotify's Release Radar: A Personalized Playlist with 16 Billion Streams
🔶 Enhance your musical artistry: Spotify's new playlist curation
🔶 Stopping False Reporting in its Tracks: Spotify Considers Game-Changing Solution
🔶 Apple Music's Shazam-powered solution for DJ mix royalties
🔶 Visa's Head of Crypto sees NFTs as a Game-Changer for Digital Commerce
🔶 Facebook's Transparency Reports: A Tech Industry Shrouded in Shadows
🔶 COVID-19 Vaccinations: A Global Race to Immunity as Disparities Persist
🔶 Sackler Family Granted Immunity in Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy
Apple's Controversial Child Safety Features Delayed: Balancing Privacy and Protection
Apple's plans to roll out child safety features, including CSAM detection for iCloud Photos, have been put on hold. The company has decided to take additional time to refine the features before releasing them to the public, citing feedback from customers, advocacy groups, and researchers. The controversial CSAM detection system uses on-device matching to compare images against a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by child safety organizations, with the result being determined without revealing the match. While Apple has received pushback from privacy advocates, the company has defended the feature, claiming it is more privacy-preserving than technology used by other companies. The delay in the rollout of these features has left many wondering if the decision was the right one.
Apple Music's Shazam-powered solution for DJ mix royalties sets the tone for fair compensation in the streaming industry
Apple Music is taking a groundbreaking step in the streaming industry by creating a process that allows for the proper identification and compensation of individual creators involved in DJ mixes. Using technology from the audio-recognition app Shazam, Apple Music is collaborating with major and independent labels to divide streaming royalties fairly among DJs, labels, and artists featured in the mixes. The move is set to retain long-term monetary value for all involved, ensuring musicians receive compensation for their work even when samples from various songs are mixed together into something unrecognizable. While this innovation helps compensate artists, streaming royalties only account for a small percentage of how musicians make money. Nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction towards fair compensation in a digital landscape.
Enhance your musical artistry: Spotify's new feature revolutionizes playlist curation
In a world where music has become the soundtrack of our lives, curating the perfect playlist has become an art form. For many, it's a labor of love, with endless hours spent searching for that one song that completes the mood or tone. Enter Enhance, Spotify's new feature that blends the best of you and the music platform to provide personalized recommendations for your playlists. For Premium users, Enhance is a game-changer, offering up to 30 recommendations woven into your tracklist, while you stay in control of what gets added. With Enhance, creating the perfect playlist is easier than ever, allowing you to do more of what you love: listening to great music. As Spotify continues to evolve, Enhance promises to be a powerful tool for all music lovers, unlocking a world of possibilities and broadening our musical horizons.
Spotify's Release Radar: A Personalized Playlist Phenomenon with 16 Billion Streams and Counting.
In a world where music is abundant and overwhelming, Spotify's Release Radar has become a beacon of hope for listeners seeking personalized curation. As the playlist celebrates its fifth anniversary, its popularity remains unwavering, with over 16 billion streams from fans across the globe. Boasting a young and diverse audience, Release Radar has joined the ranks of Discover Weekly and On Repeat as the third personalized playlist available for advertising sponsorship. Disney+ leads the way, using Release Radar to promote its Billie Eilish concert film, Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles. As technology continues to evolve, Release Radar stands as a testament to the power of innovation in shaping the future of music consumption.
Stopping False Reporting in its Tracks: Spotify Considers Game-Changing Solution for Music Streaming Industry
In the world of online music streaming, false reporting can have disastrous consequences for record labels and playlist curators. In response, a proposal has been made to implement a solution that would require users to stream music for at least 10 hours before they can report a playlist. This simple fix would make it impractical for copyright abusers to exploit the reporting system and would stop 95% of false claims. The proposal has garnered significant support and is currently under consideration by Spotify. By addressing this issue head-on, the music streaming giant has the potential to set a new industry standard for fair and equitable reporting.
Unlocking the Creator Economy: Visa's Head of Crypto sees NFTs as a Game-Changer for Digital Commerce
Visa's Head of Crypto, Cuy Sheffield, has stated that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could become a powerful accelerator for the creator economy and lower the barrier to entry for individuals to earn a living through digital commerce. Sheffield said NFTs have the potential to usher in a new form of social commerce that empowers both creators and collectors. NFTs could also fuel small and medium-sized businesses in powerful new ways by enabling them to harness public blockchains for producing digital goods, which can be delivered instantly to a crypto wallet. Sheffield added that NFTs are gaining momentum as digital-first sports memorabilia, with platforms like NBA Top Shot allowing fans to collect and display their favorite game "moments."
Facebook's Transparency Reports: A Beacon of Light in a Tech Industry Shrouded in Shadows
In an age where tech companies wield immense power and influence, Facebook's commitment to transparency is a rare and commendable feat. Through their regular Transparency Reports, the social media giant opens a window into their policies, procedures, and practices, allowing the public to hold them accountable. These reports cover a range of critical topics, from enforcing community standards and protecting intellectual property to responding to government data requests and combating internet disruptions. By providing access to data research tools, including a searchable ad database and public insights tool, Facebook goes further in promoting transparency, empowering researchers to study their impact on the world with the right privacy protections in place. In a world where information is power, Facebook's commitment to transparency is a step towards a more just and informed society.
Italian Aquarium's Female Shark Gives Birth to 'Virgin' Baby Shark After 10 Years in All-Female Tank
A female smoothhound shark has given birth to a baby shark without the presence of a male in the Cala Gonone Aquarium in Sardinia, Italy. The shark is a product of parthenogenesis, a rare phenomenon where females are capable of self-fertilizing their own eggs. Although the phenomenon has been observed in 80 vertebrate species, including sharks, fish and reptiles, this may be the first documented case in a smoothhound shark. Parthenogenesis occurs most often in carpet sharks, particularly white-spotted bamboo sharks and zebra sharks, but can happen in most shark species. In the wild, parthenogenesis is a last resort for females that cannot find a mate, while in captivity, long periods of isolation or separation from males can trigger this natural response in females.
Sackler Family Granted Immunity in Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy
In a controversial ruling, a US federal judge has approved a bankruptcy settlement for Purdue Pharma, granting the Sackler family immunity from any further civil lawsuits accusing them of contributing to the opioid epidemic. The agreement, which dissolves the OxyContin manufacturer and pays $4.5 billion to support victims of the opioid crisis over nine years, has been met with consternation from campaigners. The Sacklers admit no wrongdoing and will retain much of the wealth they amassed while in control of the drugmaker, estimated to be as much as $11 billion. The settlement establishes a fund to pay some victims of opioid addiction compensation of between $3,500 and $48,000 each, but the deal has been called “shameful” by advocacy group Public Citizen. The ruling allows the billionaires responsible for the opioid crisis to “walk free while thousands of its victims are in prison,” said the group’s research director.
COVID-19 Vaccinations: A Global Race to Immunity as Disparities Persist
As of March 6, 2023, 69.7% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with 13.32 billion doses administered globally and 560,411 doses now given each day. However, only 27.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, indicating an inequitable distribution of vaccines. To address this issue, Our World in Data is building an international vaccination dataset that tracks the effort to make vaccines available to everyone around the world, regardless of income level. The dataset is updated each morning with the most recent official numbers up to the previous day and is openly available for all to use.